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"COPY" 



ESSAYS FROM AN EDITOR'S DRAWER 



ON 



Religion, Literature and Life 




BY 



HUGH MILLER THOMPSON, D.D. 

Assistant Bishop of Mississippi. 



THIRD EDITIO: 




NEW YORK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER, 2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE 

1885 



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Copyright, 1872, by Hugh Miller Thompson. 



Copyright, 1885, by Thomas Whittaker. 



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PREFATORY NOTE. 

THIRD EDITION. 



THE First Edition of this book was published in 
1872. It comes to me quite as a surprise, that Mr. 
Whittaker, my friend and publisher, asks me for a word to 
introduce a new edition in 1885. 

He tells me there is a continued demand for it, both in 
England and this country, and that the last thousand is 
exhausted. 

I can but express my gratification that these gathered 
fragments of hasty editorial writing, in the old American 
Churchman and Church Journal, should have sufficient 
elements of vitality to be in demand after so many years. 

I yield to my publisher's opinion and commit them again, 
entirely unaltered, with all their faults upon them, to the 
good nature of the friends they have made for themselves. 

In the entirely other sphere of duty in which the writer 
is now, by Divine providence, occupied, it is not perhaps 
strange that he sometimes casts a wistful eye upon the days 
when the printer called for *^Copy," and these and other 
things were the response. 

Hugh Miller Thompson. 
Oxford, Miss., Feb., 1885. 



PREFACE. 



'TT^HE Preface is always written last. It generally con- 
tains an excuse or an apology. The author blushes 
to find himself m print, and takes the last opportunity, be- 
fore the leaves are stitched, to explain how he came to 
do violence to his innate modesty. 

My publisher tells me he must have a preface. There- 
fore I write one. 

I have no excuse or apology to offer for the book, i 
only mention this as an excuse for i\\Q preface. 

An editor writes under spur. The printer cries '"copy," 
And " copy " must come. He has no time for careful elabo- 
ration.. — for the graces of rhetoric. His flights must neces- 
sarily be short. He is happy if he succeed in alighting on 
the spot he intended. The airy gracefulness of wing, the 
soaring stretch of pinion, belong to birds of another feather. 

And yet the editor, if he is good for anything, is pre- 
sumed to have something to say, and., in his own way, 
contrives to say it ; and in some respects his way has its 
advantages. He is under penalty to be at least readable, 
to be clear, and, best of all, to be short. We tolerate every- 



IV Preface. 

thing in him but boredom. We will allow the philosopher, 
the historian, the romance writer, the theologian, the poet, 
even the preacher, to bore us, — everybody, indeed, but the 
editor. We must concede that there is a certain advantage 
in this. It were well, perhaps, were the editorial necessity 
carried farther. 

" But the editor writes for to-day. His productions 
wrap parcels on the morrow. They have served their pur- 
pose by appearing in the paper. They were ' copy ' for the 
printer; that, and nothing more." 

Is this ^uiU true ? Does hasty writing necessarily imply 
hasty thinking.^ Is a thing worth saying once not worth 
saying twice ? Does not the modern periodical press neces- 
sarily deal with the very highest questions ? And while its 
speech upon them may not be elaborate and profound, may 
it not sometimes be clear and sensible, and level with ordi- 
nary capacities ? 

There is possibly engaged in no other line of intellectual 
acdvity so much of power as is now employed in periodical 
literature. There is nowhere else so much variety of power. 
It is hard to say that what instructed, pleased, or influenced 
one set of readers, cannot instruct, please, or interest an- 
other set ; and that because thought found its first effect in 
the columns of a newspaper, it can find none in the pages 
of a book. 

The writer believes these essays are worth putting in this 
present shape, or he would not have so put them. He 



Preface. V 

knows the limitations under which they wxre written, and 
their defects. But he knows also that though the expression 
w^as hasty, the thought was not so; that they were read and 
had their effect, and he believes they may be read and have 
their effect also in their present dress. 

For years it has come to him as a part of his weekly 
w^ork to prepare a certain amount of "copy." He has 
collected some of it here, — those portions which were most 
frequently copied into papers religious and secular. He 
has arranged the papers in a sort of order which w411 be 
apparent to the reader. He has not sought for those which 
dealt especially with " Churchly," or even " religious " ques- 
tions. His purpose was rather to collect papers which 
treated questions of common life and thought from a Chris- 
tian point of view. 

On those questions he confesses to hasty writing some- 
times, when the call for " copy " was urgent. But he refuses 

to plead guilty to hasty thinking. 

H. M. T. 

New York, May, 1872. 



CONTENTS. 



Religion for Men, 

Is Christianity Weakness or Strength? 

European Democracy and Infidelity, 

The West, . . . 

The American Elephant, 

Authority and Private Judgment, 

The Bible, and the Bible Alone— I., 

The Bible, and the Bible Alone — II., 

Opinions and the Fathers, . 

An Illustration, . . . , 

Popes — Small and Great, 

Individualism, .... 

Vicarious Suffering in Life, 

Sponsorship, .... 

A Heathen Visitor, . 

About Missions, .... 

Are the Clergy Narrow? . 

Religion for Cool Weather, . 

Mismanaging the Lord's Business, . 

Massive Towers, .... 

About Gothic Churches, 

A Proprietary Christianity, 



PACK 

II 
i6 

21 

28 

33 
37 
43 
50 
57 
66 
68 
72 
78 
84 
88 

94 
100 
104 
no 
116 
122 
128 



vui Contents. 

PAGE 

A Lost Act of Worship, . . . . . 134 

Cultivating the Social Element, . . . .141 

The Art of Spending, ..... 149 

Frugality in God's Service, . . . . . 155 

Wanted — A Church, . . . . .163 

Hints about Gravestones, .... . .165 

Rich Men and Monuments, . . . . .170 

The Positive Philosophy, . . . . -177 

The Scientific Spirit of the Age, . . . 184 

The Scientific Spirit of the Age Illustrated, . . 192 

Catholic and Primitive, . . . . . 201 

Ialage W^oRSHip, . . . . .. . . 205 

Praying Toward the East, . . . , . 212 

Liberty, and what it Costs, . . . - . 217 

Theoretical and Practical, . . . . 225 

Sacramental Religion, . . , . . . 230- 

Why w^e Pray, . , . . . . 235 

A Savage World, . . . . . . 242 

Religion and Lunacy, . . . . . 246 

Sunday and Suicide, . . ... . . 252 

An Exploded Bit of Nonsense, . . . . 259 

Garnishing Sepulchres, . . . ... . 263 

The Unhappy Children, . . . . . 268 

Byron and Tennyson — An Illustration, . . . 274 

Our Premium List, . . .... . 279 

Good Humor and III, . . . . . . 285 

The Growth of a Liturgy, . . . . 288 

Truth and Truths, ....... 292 

Evil for Good, . . . . . . 298 

England and America, . . . . . . 302, 



Contents. IX 

PAGE 

Fighting and Praying, ..... 307 

Need of the Judgment, . . . . . .312 

Some Prehistoric Villages, . . . . 317 

Pain — Its Meaning, ...... 322 

The Indian Question, . . . » . . 326 

Failures, and what they Prove, . . . . 330 

Woman Suffrage — the Assumption, . . . 336 

The Gospel Visible, . . . . . p . 340 

PONTIFEX MAXIMUS, ...... 345 

The Watchword of Civilization, .... 352 

Personal Identity After Death, . . . 355 

Human Nature, . . . . . • 357 

Bits of Thought, . . ^ . . . 358 



COPY. 



RELIGION FOR MEN. 

THERE is nothing which so frightens modern religion- 
ists as strength. The popular notion of a pious man 
is, that he is amiable, harmless, and submissive. Amiability, 
harmlessness, weak acquiescence in any wrong or injury, are 
considered necessary qualities of the modern Christian. 
That a man should, for instance, blaze out into fierce and 
sudden wTath, and speak and act with righteous resentment 
and indignation, would effectually destroy his reputation for 
piety in the minds of the general run of good people. 

Our modern interpretation of Christianity has left no place 
for the strong and stern qualities of human nature. Religion 
can only suppress or, if possible, exterminate these. They 
are bad and evil, it seems, in themselves. The amiable, the 
mild, and the w^omanly in human nature are all religion can 
find any use for. 

It does not concern us to ask how this interpretation of 
Christianity has come to be accepted. As a fact, it is ac- 
cepted now, almost universally, by religious people. Christi- 
anity is valuable to them as a mild, consoling, loving religion. 
It is good to soothe the heart and calm the feelings, to com- 
fort the mourner and bring peace to the dying, to cast the 
brightness of hope over the real or fancied sufferings of life, 
and, especially, over the gloom of death. 



1 2 ' Copy. 

And all this is true. But is it all the truth ? Has not the 
acceptance of it as the whole truth a great deal to do with 
the most pitiful fact of the day, that religion has become the 
business mainly of the women ? We do not say by intention 
at all, but we do say that, effectually, the ordinary setting 
forth of the religious character, the ordinarily accepted type 
of Christianity presented, has been such as is possible only 
for women, and for certain exceedingly femininely consti- 
tuted men. 

It is strange enough that a religion whose history is writ- 
ten in fire on the face of the world ; a religion whose Divine 
Author denounced, in words that scorch and wither in their 
white flame, the evil deeds of this world, and their evil doers ; 
a religion which, at its first mission, was declared to be 
*' not peace, but a sword ; " a religion whose long story is illus- 
trated by the most heroic doing as well as suffering, by the 
strong, unbending, masterful will of the strongest men that 
ever lived, by the fierce, passionate, and consuming warfare 
of eager, stubborn, and courageous men ; it is strange, we 
say, looking down the long history, beginning with such a 
man as S. Paul, that the outcome should be, now, after 
eighteen centuries, that Christianity has no place for fierce, 
aggressive courage, for stern, unbending will, for righteous 
indignation, for masterful genius in controlling men, for all 
those powers of our nature that, in every other cause, are 
essential to success. 

Is it not possible that, in this case, the half-truth has be- 
come, as in other cases, a lie ? On the whole, is a true relig- 
ion mainly useful as it makes people comfortable, as it 
smooths away asperities, and cloaks difi'erences, and allows 
us all to get on with our various schemes in an easy, pleas- 
ant manner ? Are our schemes, nowadays, all so good, and 
our lives so delightfully innocent; is all the world getting on 
so pleasantly, that the business of Christianity is only to 
soothe us and keep up peaceful and quiet in this good life, and 
in these good works .^ 



Religion for Men. I 3 

Men denounce religious discussion, or bewail religious 
asperities as " unchristian " or " uncharitable," forgetful of the 
fact that for eighteen centuries God's truth has been fighting 
for room to live here, and the devil's lies are not all killed 
yet. They bewail, in the simplicity of their innocence, the 
heat of good men on religious questions, as if that heat were 
a sin, and not, as in many cases, what it ought to be in all, a 
duty. 

Human nature is all injured. Human nature is to be all 
restored. There is no faculty better or worse than another. 
Human love is no better, and no worse in itself, than hate. 
Wrath is no more sinful in itself than good nature. 

Calvinism was not a particularly weak system. In truth, 
it was a decidedly strong one. Nevertheless, the result of it 
is the feminine view of religion we have mentioned. For 
practically it became Manicheism. It left the impression 
that the bad in human nature was confined to a certain part 
in that nature. A man was split in halves. Half his facul- 
ties were good. The other half were hopelessly bad. Its 
disciples took that revenge on the hideousness of its original 
doctrine of human nature. They could not accept the teach- 
ing that every natural instinct, appetite, and feeling were in 
their very essence bad. They gradually made a compro- 
mise ; the strong, unruly, wilful, and aggressive powers, ugly 
in many of their manifestations, — these were totally depraved 
and bad ; but the amiable and mild gifts w^ere particularly 
good, and especially Christian. 

It was shallow enough, but religion has been very shal- 
lowly taught for some years back. 

It seems plain enough that God gave man the capacity 
of hate, as well as the capacity of love. He gave both for 
good purposes. In the imperfection of man's nature, both 
are injured. He loves where he ought not, and he hates 
where he ought not. His amendment lies in loving rightly 
but also it lies equally in hating rightly. He can no more 
destroy the one power than the other. He has just as much 



1 4 Copy. 

need of the one as of the other for his work and for God's 
purposes. He is not a man without the capacity of hating? 
and he is certainly not a Christian man unless he hates many 
things very bitterly. 

So God gave the capacity for wrath and resentment. 
They are in themselves no more evil or wrong than the most 
gentle amiability. They are very necessary for the work of 
this world. We cannot do without them. Just wrath, right- 
eous indignation — burning and fierce — have been and are very 
blessed and desirable things in a world like this. We can- 
not spare them out of the Church of God. 

Christianity takes the whole of human nature, and seeks 
not to destroy, but to save and regenerate and perfect every 
part, — body, soul, and spirit. It finds a place for every fac- 
ulty and every power. It aims to give each right direction 
and right measure. There is no power of our nature, no 
quality of humanity, that can be too large or too strong, if 
only directed to its right purposes. 

The golden year has not yet dawned on the world's hori- 
zon. Life figures itself still as a battle. 

" The canniest gait, the strife is sair." 

God's Church here is a Church militant yet. The fight has 
only just begun. W^e know, in any battle, what qualities go 
to gain success. Christianity has never been a religion of 
rose-water. The most amiable sentimentalism has never 
burned any of the world's hideous idols. It needs not that 
one be a prophet to see that, in the days before us, there will 
be need of the gifts that count on the hard-fought field. 
Either we must enter on a war, real soldiers and fighters, 
ready, not only to suffer, but to do, or we Christians may as 
well give up the business for which Christianity was organ- 
ized on earth. 

And we want to do our small share toward recalling to 
the minds of those that think and teach, the fact that clois- 
ter virtues may be very good in the cloister, but that the 



Religion for Men. I 5 

most of us are in the world, and in a hard, bitter, bad, ugly- 
looking world too. There are things, palpable and visible, 
to be opposed and destroyed. The exercise of charity and 
tenderness, and the amiable domestic virtues, are not all of 
the Christian life in the rough days we live in. 

We must preach a whole Christianity again. Once more 
the sword sent on earth to slay the earth's sins must be un- 
sheathed ; once more the Church of God must be terrible 
— " an army with banners ; " once more we must find a place 
for the strongest, fiercest powers of human nature when 
sanctified by God's Spirit to God's purposes ; once more the 
religion of that God who " is a consuming fire " must be 
not merely a "comfort" to men in their sins. 

In the sentimentalism that passes for religion, in the ami- 
able weakness that thinks itself piety, in the gentle cowardice 
that counts for Christian meekness, in the effeminacy that 
considers just anger sinful and hatred of evil deeds lack of 
Christian charity, it is a comfort to one's soul to read — stand- 
ing for a perpetual record that he was a man — every inch a 
man ; that the saint lost nothing of his manhood in gaining 
sainthood — that honest, hot burst of St. Paul, "Alexander 
the coppersmith did me much evil : the Lord reward him 
according to his works ! " 

At all events, until our Christianity can cease to be 
shocked by such expression as that, from a Bishop's lips if 
need be, it must remain, we fear, what so many men consider 
it, — an affair for their wives and daughters, a thing altogether 
too ethereal and frail to bear the wear and tear of the rude 
lives themselves have to live. We must find a place for all 
types of character. They are all needed; we must have a 
religion which looks not only to make woman more womanly, 
but man more manly. 

To sum this as we have to sum so many things, the world 
needs, and especially our own piece of the world, primitive 
and catholic Christianity again, — a thing big enough and 
strong enough to take in men and women both. 



IS CHRISTIANITY WEAKNESS OR STRENGTH? 

IT is a part of the smallness of our human nature that we 
can generally only take one side of a thing; and which 
side depends on prejudice or fancy, on times and circum- 
stances. It is so with Christianity. We heard, the other day, 
a man — a strong, muscular, energetic, downright man, an 
earnest Christian — fiercely and bitterly denouncing a vile 
wrong, and in burning words stating his opinion of the doer. 
He minced nothing. He spoke the thought that was in him 
straight out. He was indignant ; his moral sense outraged ; 
and though one of the tenderest and gentlest of men, with all 
his strength he blazed out into sudden wrath about this das- 
tardly deed and its dastardly doer. It did us good to hear 
him. We like strong Saxon in any cause ; and our friend 
used his mother-tongue like a master. The variety, force, and 
telling distinctness of English speech were well illustrated 
in a series of sentences that hit the mark like rifle-bullets. 
The whole moral atmosphere about the speaker seemed 
clearer and purer when he had done. It was like the air 
after a sudden thunder-storm and a few lightning flashes in 
summer, — cool and healthy. But there were other hearers 
besides ourselves — very good people, very good Christian 
people ; and on our expressing some satisfaction at our 
friend's energetic outburst, we were met with the objection 
that "he showed a spirit that was not Christian. He had ex- 
hibited altogether too much wrath, and had given way to 
bitter denunciation. It w^as not the mild and loving spirit 
of Christ which he disolayed, but the carnal spirit of earthly 
bitterness," etc. 



Is Christianity Weakness or Strength? I 7 

It set us thinking on a subject which has always been of 
much anxiety and suspense to us : Was our friend's spirit 
unchristian, or were his critics entirely and utterly mistaken 
about " the spirit of Christ ? " How has it come to pass that 
the general estimate of what is Christian finds no place for 
a temper like our friend's ; that the majority of good, amiable 
Christian folk are startled and shocked by a manly outburst 
like his ? 

Certainly, if one tests the question by the New Testa- 
ment, he will find Christianity a positive and decided matter 
enough. In the mouth of our Lord and His Apostles there 
are no weak words. Force and energy, that cleave straight 
to the roots, appear in every sentence. There is energetic 
love ; but, also, energetic abhorrence and powerful denun- 
ciation. The Christian spirit does not figure itself there as 
mere milk-and-water amiability ; as namby-pamby vagueness, 
or imbecile good nature. " Woe unto you, Scribes and 
Pharisees, hypocrites ! " " Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! woe 
unto thee, Bethsaida ! " " Thou, Capernaum, shalt be brought 
down to hell ! " " Better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the 
depth of the sea ! " " It had been good for that man if 
he had not been born ! " 

Scores of such sentences — two-edged, flashing, piercing 
to the very marrow — dart from the lips of the Lord. There 
is no tampering with wrong, no weakness in dealing with 
sin. With infinite love, indeed, but with strong love, not 
with weak ; with manlike and Godlike love. He speaks ; 
but also w^ith strong hatred of evil ; with fierce and glow- 
ing denunciations of it and its doers. And yet, notwith- 
standing all, the age has taken up with the notion that 
Christianity is weakly mild, and that he best illustrates the 
Christian spirit who is most amiable and most unaggressive 
and most complying. 

Vague, mild, and gentle talk is Christian talk. Vague, 
hesitating, and imbecile feeling is Christian feeling, — sc . 



1 8 Copy. 

think the mass of good people, or " goody people,'* as they 
should be really called. And good men rise and talk what 
we fear is mere cant ; repeating, parrot-like, phrases of love, 
and explaining weakly away anything that may seem like 
force or manliness. 

They do it in the pulpit. They cannot denounce a sin 
without explaining away the denunciation. They cannot 
announce a strong opinion without apologizing for it, or a 
clear opinion without explaining away the opinion in the 
attempt to show that they disagree with nobody else who 
may hold just the opposite. The bane of many a pulpit is 
this weakness, which will not allow the plain statement of 
plain things ; which, in its excessive and imbecile amiability, 
is forever apologizing for holding opinions of its own ; for 
differing from anybody else on any matter whatever. 

And this age, in all else, is a hard, matter-of-fact, and 
energetic age enough. It will tolerate, nowhere else, un- 
certainty and amiable apologetics. It sneers at sentiment 
and romance, and every exhibition of feeling that is not 
honest and strong. It wants downright doing, and strong 
talking, in all matters, — force, precision, and aggressive as- 
sault on all opposition. 

It takes revenge by concentrating all its weakness, all its 
sentimentality, all its vague helplessness and amiable soft^ 
ness into its religion ; and the " popular Christianity " of the 
time is like a piece of poor calico out of which all the color 
has been boiled and washed. When the eye flames, and the 
voice swells, and the fist grips hard, as a righteous soul ex- 
presses righteous indignation about some sham or cant, or 
denounces bitterly some sin, or some misleading lie and its 
defenders, the " popular Christianity " recoils in horror, and 
cries, "Ah, it may all be true, but this is not the spirit of 
Christ ! " We join issue with it. It is the spirit of Christ. 
And this " popular Christianity " has so far lost the character 
of Christianity that it does not know what "the spirit of 
Christj" about which it talks so glibly, is. 



Is Christianity Weakness or Strength? 19 

We have allowed a caricature of Christian feeling to 
come and stand for the reality. Instead of the strong ten- 
derness of Christ, we are imposed upon by the imbecile 
tenderness of a doting, a foolish, parent. Instead of the all- 
powerful love of God, we are cheated by a weak love, like 
that of some fond and indulgent mother who spoils her 
child. Instead of the energetic, two-handed, working char- 
ity and philanthropy of Christianity, w^e are deluded by a 
caricature, the milk-and-water weakness of amiability and 
sentiment, which knows no discrimination between knaves 
and honest people. 

We have not "only lost the strong, denunciatory, and 
wrathful side of our religion, but we have made a helpless, 
drivelling caricature of its loving side, and an easy good 
nature, an effeminate sentimentalism has come to be called 
"the Christian spirit." And we need go no further for the 
cause of the fact that the business of religion has come to 
be left so largely to the women and children. The men are 
repelled. They have no special taste for tasteless, lack- 
lustre amiability. On the w^iole, it is not a sentimental 
world, nor is it a sentimental business living in it. A re- 
ligion, to bear the wear and tear of the time, and stand a 
man in stead at his counter, office, and shop, must be a real, 
positive, and effective factor in human life ; a thing to be 
touched and handled and used, and that will not fade away 
into mist. 

Is the sum and substance of Christianity this, — that it 
teaches men to be tolerant and good-natured ; that it offers 
them consoling words in trouble, and speaks softly to them 
when they are sick, and says hopeful things about them when 
they are dead.'^ Shall we accept the common estimate of 
"our common Christianity," and go on repeating mild 
phrases, parrot-like, in soft voices, apologizing for daring to 
differ from anybody, as if that were some breach of Christian 
charity ? We have only to say that this is not the Christianity 
that conquered the world of old. It is not the Christianity 



20 Copy. 

which called to its side, by an impulse irresistible, the great- 
est brains and strongest hearts in all the world, fourteen 
centuries ago. Ambrose, the soldier, the statesman, the 
man of the world ; Augustine, the genius, the scholar, the 
gentleman ; Athanasius, the royal-hearted, imperial of will 
and intellect in the mystery of commanding millions to follow 
where he led ; aye, all the wonderful bead-roll of splendid 
names that adorn that great century, when all that was 
strong, wise, bold, and splendid in the great Empire natu- 
rally and inevitably stood by the altar and ascended the 
pulpit. 

If we are ever to reach the heroic and conquering days 
again, it must be by the old Christianity of power. Weak 
words to conceal weaker feeling. must go. Mere apologies 
and negations must vanish. There is some meaning in the 
words, though we have been so anxious to forget it, — " I am 
not come to send peace on earth, but a sword ! '* We must 
rise to understand that there is here, in the midst of an evil 
world, a Church militant, and a Truth militant, — that Chris- 
tianity is an armed resistance, sword in hand, against 
enemies; that the main spirit and temper is the spirit and 
temper of the loyal soldier in the centre of overwhelming 
foes; that we need downright, straightforward, manly, and 
powerful doing, no matter who is hurt ; that the gospel call 
is a trumpet-blast for a charge, as well as a song of conso- 
lation ; that the Christian knight must bind up wounds and 
speak gently to the fallen, but that he is an armed knight 
still, sword in hand, against sleepless foes, and his main busi- 
ness, to the battle's end, must be fighting. 

This is the chosen, inspired simile. It is a reality to the 
end, and figures the fact exactly as the fact stands. It used 
to be accepted so, when men consecrated power, masterful 
will, flaming eloquence, fiercest energy, and most defiant 
courage, to the " Lord of all Power and Might." It must be 
so again before God's day rises in glory on the strifes of the 
world. 



EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY AND INFIDELITY. 

ONE of the things which strike Americans very oddly 
as they become acquainted with European opinion, 
h the universal association, in that opinion, of democracy 
with irreligion. At home, the American does not see that 
the fact of his living under a democratic form of govern- 
ment at all interferes with his Christianity. Comparing his 
own country with others, he does not see that infidelity or 
irreligion are peculiarly prevalent at home. In fact, the in- 
fidelity which does exist is not American at all, but European 
and imported, and grew up, not under a democracy, but 
under an absolute monarchy. And the same is the case 
when that infidelity takes the active form of irreligion, and 
shows itself outwardly in Sunday beer-gardens and theatres, 
and in a general boozy and beery opposition to Christianity 
and the feelings of other people. It seems queer to him, 
with his experience, that the democrat of Europe should be 
a half atheist, a destructive, and a scoffer at religion, when 
he, brought up in a democracy, and with all in possession 
that the other only hopes for, sees that Christianity is the 
only possible basis for the stability of the republic. 

Why should the advocates of republicanism in Europe 
be infidels.^ Why should they be "Red Republicans," — de- 
structives ? Why should they hate the Church as bitterly as 
they hate the State ? Why should they class the priest with 
the privileged aristocrat? And why do all order-lovdng peo- 
ple, all who have any religion or any property, look with a 
sort of terror, as if he were a savage wild beast, on an 
avowed democrat ? 



22 Copy. 

That this is the case over continental Europe is well 
known to all who take the pains to know anything about it. 
It is not so in England. A man may there avow democratic 
opinions as boldly as if he were a born American, and no- 
body would consider him, of necessary consequence, an in- 
fidel. He may advocate republican institutions, and be a 
very regular church-goer, and a very exemplary communi- 
cant. But on the continent this is out of the question. 
Republicanism there hates the Church and its ministers, 
hates religion and all its belongings, denounces both as some 
of the means by which tyrants oppress mankind. " Tyranny " 
and " priestcraft " are two terms always connected by the 
continental democrat. And the connection is made by the 
republican of Protestant Prussia, as it is by the republican 
of Papal Italy. 

Revolutionary France overthrows the Church as she 
overthrows the Throne. Revolutionary . Spain turns the 
Jesuits adrift and suppresses the monastic orders. Gari- 
baldi, a man naturally religious, is forced, at last, from his 
mere position as a European democrat, to denounce religion 
as he denounces absolutism. And such a man as Mazzini, 
who represents better than almost anybody the average sen- 
timent of continental democracy, raves against Christianity, 
or at least against the Church that represents it, with a viru- 
lence of hatred almost ludicrous, if it were not connected 
with so much that is tragical. Why is this connection, — so 
strange, apparently, to us ? 

A late event in Rome offers the text of the explanation. 
Two Roman democrats were executed in the city of Rome, 
lately, in public, and accounts of their execution have been 
read, probably, by most who will read this. In one point of 
view, there is nothing out of the way in the execution. The 
two men were members of one of those secret revolutionary 
associations which exist all over the continent. They 
wished to overthrow the existing goverment of Rome, and, 
as a step in that direction, undertook to blow up the barracks 



European Democracy and Infidelity. 23 

of the Papal Zouaves. They suffered for the attempt, just 
as the Fenians suffered in London, who undertook to release 
their fellow-conspirators by the original method of blowing 
up the Clerkenwell prison, the place of confinement, and 
who succeeded in the brilliant attempt to the extent of kill- 
ing and maiming a number of innocent people. Nobody 
but the Fenians themselves seemed to think it at all strange 
that these amiable gentlemen should suffer for the murder. 
The government, unless it abdicated all pretence to govern, 
could not allow people, Fenians or otherwise, to amuse 
themselves by exploding barrels of gunpowder under stone 
walls, in the midst of a great city. 

In that view, the government of Rome, in executing the 
two Italian patriots, was only doing what, like the English 
government, it was bound to do. The Roman execution, by 
beheading, and in the most crowded and public place of the 
city, may be compared unfavorably with the English ; but, 
to the criminals themselves, it was possibly of no conse- 
quence whether they were hung in the English style, or guil- 
lotined in the Roman. 

But there is another point of view in which the Roman 
execution was unique. The criminals were tried under a 
government of priests, and it was a bishop who ordered 
their execution. 

Now, considering the sentiment of the universal Church 
about the matter of blood-guiltiness in the clergy, this is 
worthy of remark. That the Pope is temporal sovereign 
of Rome does not, in the least, alter the fact that he is 
bishop of Rome ; and so strict are the ancient canons that 
they absolutely forbade the ordination of men who had 
taken human life, even by accident, and suspended from 
his functions a bishop or priest who had taken the life of a 
man unintentionally. In the English Church, where the 
bishops are members of the High Court of Parliament, such 
deference is paid to the ancient principle that, in all cases 
of parliamentary trials, where the accused is capitally 



24 Copy. 

charged, the bishops never sit as judges. But here we have 
the strange sight, in this Roman execution, of a bishop signing 
the death warrant of two of his spiritual children, after they 
are sincerely penitent, too, according to the testimony of 
two of the said bishop's priests. That is to say, by the mix- 
ing up of Church and State in Europe, of which the Papal 
States, w^here a bishop is also king, are the most striking 
example, it has come to pass that the Church, whose law is 
mercy and forgiveness, has been compelled to abdicate her 
own ground and become a kingdom of this world, and bish- 
ops and priests turn executioners. 

The Roman execution is only a striking instance of the 
working out of the Church and State connection in one w^ay. 
The theory is always that the Church is coextensive with- 
the State, and the State with the Church. They are but dif- 
ferent names for the same organic body. The consequence 
is that the Church becomes responsible, apparently at least, 
for all the misgovernment and oppression of the State, and 
lends her spiritual sanction to sustain wrong and tyranny tc 
almost any degree required. 

This is the phase which Christianity presents to the 
European mind. It is just the same in Protestant Sweden 
that it has been in Papal Spain. The State Church, in re- 
turn for its legal advantages, justifies, defends, and supports 
the State in any oppression. Its clergy are placed also 
among the privileged classes ; sometimes, as in most Roman 
Catholic States, they are the most privileged class. They 
share the advantages of the privileged class;, but, also, 
they share the odium. The consequence is, a whole har- 
vest of hatred and ill-will against those v/ho, by their office, 
should be the friends of the poor, the protectors of the op- 
pressed, the ministers of mercy and kindness to the lowly 
and the suffering. 

That this hatred and ill-will are not universal is owing 
to the fact that no false position in which it may be placed 
can make Christianity anything save what it is ; that no Stat- 



European Democracy and Infidelity. 25 

ofiicialism makes a bishop less a bishop, or a priest less a 
priest, or can remove, from the minds of thousands of good 
men, the solemn sense of the spiritual duty which those 
offices contain. In the State Church the faithful bishop is 
still the kindly and meek shepherd of the flock. The 
" lordship " never makes him forget the solemn vows of his 
ordination to the office, higher than any peerage in an 
earthly kingdom. And the faithful pastor is still the friend 
of the poor, the sympathizing helper in the home of sick- 
ness or poverty or suffering. No rights conferred by earthly 
law blind him to the solemn duties laid on him by the law 
divine. 

So it may well happen, as it is more an-d more the case, 
we believe, in England, that in spite of being '^privileged," 
and in spite of all the envy arising from a privileged condi- 
tion, the clergy of a State Church may make common cause 
with the people, and gain and retain a hold upon their love 
and regard which no shocks of the social fabric can weaken. 
But it is in spite of their position as clergy of a Church 
"by law established," and when they fail by faithfulness 
and self-devotion to overcome the disadvantages of their 
privileged position, the Church becomes confounded, in the 
minds of reformers, with all the other abuses of the social 
order. 

The confusion of the spiritual and the temporal, the cap- 
tivity of Christianity by the kings of the earth since the 
time of Constantine, its conversion into a kingdom of this 
world, is the secret of the half, if not the whole, of European 
infidelity. In the minds of European republicans the whole 
thing is lumped in a mass. To them the Church seems but 
an appendage of the State, an engine of government, often 
an engine of oppression. It is used to give the awful sanc- 
tion of spiritual authority to a power which, in their view, 
is trampling on the rights of men. It has abdicated its 
divine character of a protector of the oppressed, a refuge 
for the helpless, a kingdom vrhich makes king and beggar 
2 



2 6 Copy 

brethren, and equal before God, and is only a police institu- 
tion to help keep things as they are, and frighten the ignor- 
ant, by divine terrors, from any complaint against their 
tyrants. And from the shortcoming of its ministers they 
transfer their dislike to religion itself. They know no Chris- 
tianity save this which they see. Distrusting that, they 
distrust all. Hating that, there is nothing before them but 
hatred of religion altogether. They are not able to discrim- 
inate between the reality and the accident of position. 

To an Italian, for instance, who sees the miserable mis- 
government of his country, its weakness, poverty, and divi- 
sions ; who feels that nothing but a new social order, which 
shall give some hope to the poor, some self-respect and char- 
acter to the millions of ignorant and down-trodden of his 
countrymen, — to such an one, what vision does the Church 
present 1 Is she not identified with every odious measure ? 
Is it not the Pope, to-day, that prevents Italy from being a 
strong, united, free, and powerful nation } 

And this Pope is a bishop — as far as the Church and her 
constitution is concerned — a bishop, and nothing more. 
He may be the '' first bishop," the ^'prince of bishops," the 
" successor of S. Peter," and all the rest of it; but he is only 
a bishop still, as far as any spiritual duty or function is con- 
cerned. As a bishop, he is pastor of a flock. There are 
souls committed to his charge. He is responsible, by the 
vows of his ordination, for the sheep committed to him. 
And yet, by this unchristian union of the things of Caesar 
and the things of God, this poor old bishop is a temporal 
tyrant, whom his misgoverned and oppressed people would 
remove; and he is obliged to keep them in subjection, like 
any other tyrant, with zouaves and cannon, with needle-guns 
and bayonets. 

What shall we say to a European reformer who looks at 
this ? Remembering what a bishop is meant to be, reading 
in the New Testament the qualifications for that high office, 
what shall we say to a patriot v;ho looks at the modern 



European Democracy and Infidelity 27 

prince and head of all bishops (as he claims) reviewing his 
hired mercenaries, and " blessing his parks of artillery ? " And 
when we consider that he has been brought up to accept 
this or nothing, to admit this bishop and his Church as being 
Christianity, certain and infallible, and the only power on 
earth that represents the Lord, need vre wonder that a 
European republican has little love for Church or priest- 
hood, and is disposed to question even Christianity itself? 

Before Christianity in Europe there is a day of trial. 
The day awaits all the Protestant forms of it, as it does the 
Papal. It is prophesied, and all indications appear to favor 
the prophecy, that half a century will see Europe repub- 
licanized. What will be left of religion in republicanized 
Europe ? 

A Church that has washed her hands of all temporal 
defilement, that stands on her own divine ground, a kingdom 
not of this world, could answer confidently. A Christianity 
that stood clear of all State entanglement, and claimed su- 
premacy only in its own grand dominion of morals and of 
conscience, might be sure of its reply. But a Christianity 
intertwined and woven with offensive and oppressive systems 
of selfishness and injustice, and made a tool of by such 
systems, — what shall it reply? 

It has been a part of the moral government of God, in 
this world, that there should be a new world to contrast the 
old. The problems of ages have found solution in new 
circumstances. It is not for nothing that a republic should 
already exist where men of European blood have reconciled 
the most absolute individual freedom with the Christianity 
which has all along taught that freedom, and brought about 
its establishment. 

In more ways than one the new world is the hope of the 
old. And it is especially its hope in this, that it has cut the 
chains which bound the Church of God to earthly govern- 
ments, has given Caesar that which is Ccesar's, and has 
utterly denied him that which is God's. 



THE WEST. 

THE valley of the Mississippi is the heart of this con- 
tinent. The future American, the typal man of the 
new world, will be found in this valley, and here will be the 
most completely, thoroughly, and truly American portion of 
diis whole land, the guardian of its ethics and its manners. 
We have written down a few statements which are axioms in 
the West. The belief in these things, the conviction that 
they are sure to come, is innate in the western man ; he 
may not always be able to give the reasons for his opinion ; 
he may not know how to get a New York man, or a Boston 
man, to see as he does ; but that does not affect his own 
conviction that he lives in the heart of the country, and that 
his childrens' children will be the most truly American of all 
Americans. 

The true western man goes a great deal on instinct. He 
sees a great many things intuitively. He somehow blunders 
to the right end. He may not be able to tell how he got 
there, but he is there at last, and that is enough. He 
reaches his conclusions by intuition. It is too busy a world, 
and too big a world, to split hairs in. Nevertheless, there 
are indications enough to justify the western man's opinion 
to the colder reason of his eastern brethren. That he is in 
the land's heart is a geographical fact simply. That he is 
removed from foreign influences is plainly another. .The 
Boston boy, or the New York boy, with the flags of all 
nations in his eyes, may grow up, indeed, to love his own, 
but it cannot occupy that exclusive and lonely regard in his 
mind which it does in that of the Chicago boy, for whom 



The West. 29 

the only banner that floats is the stars and stripes. The 
circulation is warmer at the heart. It is sometimes cold or 
intermittent at the extremities. 

Another thing we see is, that inevitably the metropolis, 
the great city of the land, will be at last here. Our seaboard 
cities are the largest yet, only because — having been so far 
rather colonial dependencies of Europe than a self-centred 
nation — our largest business transfers have been abroad. 
Because foreign commerce has been so large, therefore the 
maritime city has been the great city. But when we have a 
population of one hundred millions ; when our internal com- 
merce exceeds our foreign ten to one ; when our home 
transfers are to our European as the whole to a tithe, it is 
very plain that the transfers will not be made, nor bills paid, 
nor the balance of exchange arranged, in any city on our 
foreign border. That city will be somewhere near the land's 
heart., some place at the centre of our national business and 
interest and feeling. The great city of this continent, all 
thoughtful western men feel instinctively, is yet to be built. 
It may be Chicago, it may be St. Louis. It may be built on 
some broad prairie, bare as yet even of a settler's cabin, or 
some uncleared swamp where the rotting vegetation yet lies 
rank ; but built it will be in the West. As Paris is the city 
of France, and not Boulogne ; as London is England's city, 
and not Liverpool ; as Pekin, and not Shanghai, is the city of 
China, so, somewhere in the land, and not on its border, w^ill 
be the great city of the United States. 

Another thing noticeable to us all is, that the West is not 
provincial. It has no sectionalism. The tendency is to the 
largest and most complete nationality. W^e see it in speech, 
we see it in manner. New England has a tone. It has a 
manner. It is provincial. Even New York and Pennsylva- 
nia have their marks. You can distinguish them by a certain 
accent. There is a local twang in speech, a peculiar style 
in manner. Even educated men do not lose this altogether. 
The New England tone w^ill exist ia the most cultivated 



30 Copy. 

Boston reader or speaker. It marks him, through all his 
cultivation, a provincial. New York city has the least of 
provincialism, because New York is yet the gathering place 
for all the land. It is what the West is. And it is often 
remarked, on that account, that New York is more like a 
western city than any other, and the New York man more 
like the western man. 

In the West, men are gathered from all parts of our own 
country, and from all others. They are thrown together, 
and their local peculiarities are rubbed off. They cease 
to be sectional, and become national. They get rid of pro- 
vincialisms and neighborhood peculiarities. The western 
man has no tone^ no twangs no odd dialect, no peculiar man- 
nerisms. We are perfectly aware that many good people 
have a notion that a land settled twenty years, perhaps, and 
occupied by men from all parts of the globe — by a restless, 
changing, busy population, who travel more miles in a week 
than any other number of people anywhere in a year — have 
yet a " neighborhood " language, and a provincial, peculiar 
*' western dialect." Intelligent men have talked to us about 
this "western dialect," this "pioneer idiom," this "border 
provincialism," and have done it in the tone and with the 
twang of an intense provincialism, of which they were 
profoundly unconscious. 

These small peculiarities cannot stay long in the life men 
lead in the busy West. The one thing remarkable is that a 
man brought up in the west may be taken for a southerner 
or a northerner, a western man or an eastern man, a Scotch- 
man or an Englishman. His language will betray nothing. 
He speaks English, and not a dialect of English. He is an 
American^ the cosmopolitan man; that is, the man in whom 
all the European races have met and mingled. He is not 
any of them in special, and yet he is like them all. 

The immense and rapid development of the West has 
been spoken of often enough, and urged as a reason for giv- 
ing thought and attention to this fast-growing section of the 



The AVest. 3^ 

country. But even this development can only be understood 
upon the ground Men see it there. The words in which 
they speak of it to others seem absurd or extravagant. They 
know they cannot exaggerate, and yet their most reasonable 
statements, they are conscious, must appear exaggeration to 
others. 

But v\-e let that go. Its material development, grand as 
it is, is not what makes the importance of the West. That 
the " land of corn and wheat " can feed the w^orld is not 
the real source of its importance to us. That already its 
commerce more than doubles the maritime commerce of the 
country is not all. That it ovv^is more than half the railroads, 
and gives business to half the other half, is only a part. That 
its population has so increased that the valley of the great 
river contains more than half the people of this country, and 
vastly more than half its wealth, — this, too, is only a part. 
That this valley is still filling, and in a few decades will con- 
tain three fourths of the American people, is not all either. 
The real and solemn importance of the West is the fact 
which we have dvv'elt upon, that it is the country's hea7't^ that 
it must give law and opinion to the whole land, that the 
sentiment of the West will be American sentiment ; the man- 
ners of the West, American manners ; the feeling of the West, 
American feeling. We see that, year by year, this end is 
coming nearer. We are sure, in the nature of things, that it 
is inevitable. Wliatever we allow the valley of the Missis- 
sippi to become, that the land will become. 

We are aware that this will seem to many people only 
another piece of extravagance. We write it in no extrava- 
gant spirit. It is, to us, calm and sober conviction. The 
facts are staring us in the face. AVe cannot shun them if we 
would. Steadily, the end comes nearer. Western citie? 
growing, western states fast filling, western opinion hard- 
ening down, and asserting its authority, western men at the 
head of the nation, — the facts are clear. He is a fool who 
shuts his eyes to them. 



32 Copy. 

This makes the importance of the West. To the states- 
man, to the patriot, to the philosopher, this is what renders 
the West the great problem that it is. This, too, is what 
makes it of such profound importance to the Christian. 
The arm. of the land, the heart of the land, concentrating 
fast its physical force, and faster still its moral might, its 
brain power and its controlling and consuming energy, we 
ask ourselves, What are we doing for the West "> How^ are we 
prospering in the West .? What are we making of the West ? 
We ask this because we know that it means. What are we 
doing in the country .^ How are we prospering in the 
country ? What are we making of the nation for all time to 
come ? 



THE AMERICAN ELEPHANT. 

ONCE in our life we met a curious book. It was only a 
school geography, but the most laughable geography 
ever devised by the wit of man. What added to the amuse- 
ment w^as the fact that the waiter had not meant to be amus- 
ing. He was in dead earnest No owl could be more 
solemn than he. We have forgotten his name, but we shall 
never forget his little book ; and if it be our fortune ever to 
meet him, we shall most gratefully make our personal ac- 
knowledgments for an hour's hearty laughter over his pages. 
He was an Englishman. We remember that. He was an 
EngHsh clergyman, too, — a university man, we think. He 
wrote his geography for parish schools. It may be taught ip 
them still, for anything wt know to the contrary. In fact, 
from a great deal we read in English periodicals — the "Sat- 
urday Review, " for instance — v/e should rather think it a 
standard English geography to this day. 

Well, among a great number of facts about America 
stated in this little book, which were entirely new to us, we 
were informed that " all natural productions on the western 
continent were smaller than the corresponding ones on the 
eastern." This was shown, if we remember rightly, from 
the oaks of America, w^hich, it w^ould seem, are seldom over 
twenty feet high ! But we are not so sure of this illustra- 
tion. We are, however, of this one : " The elephant of 
America, for instance, is not larger than a hog ! " 

That illustration, we are quite certain, our memory will 
always retain. It was so pat to the purpose, so short, clear, 
and, above all, so laughable, that it will stick to us while we 



34 Copy. 

have any memory at all. We shall never hear of an English 
" geography for schools '' without seeing that wonderful 
^'American elephant " that is to wallow through the dreams 
of all John's children, sadly shorn of his fair proportions, — 
no larger, poor fellow, trunk packed and all, than an ordi- 
nary Berkshire ! 

The writer of an article on Mormonism, in the " North 
British Review, " must have studied this famous geography for 
his knowledge of matters American. While he says nothing 
new about ^'the saints," he contrives to exhibit a new phase 
of that dense ignorance of this hemisphere which, in the 
•other case, converted the peccary into the "American ele- 
phant." In trying to account for the growth of this stupid 
imposture, he says : " That which lends to Mormonism nearly 
all its strength, is its being emphatically the religion of the 
poor! " 

Is not that a discovery to come from beyond the Tweed } 
Mormonism has the very mark which our Lord, offered to 
the Baptist, in proof that the dispensation which he had 
heralded was now come in power, — " The poor have the Gos- 
pel preached unto them." But mark the thorough knowl- 
edge of the social condition of the United States exhib- 
ited in this : " The excited state of the American working 
classes of that period, and the way in which the moneyed 
interest had ruthlessly trodden down the poor, rendered 
the religion of Christ nearly a dead letter to them." Cer- 
tainly, the "American elephant " is an extraordinary beast ! 
What "period" is this in our history.? What class of our 
community are the " down-trodden poor } " Who are these 
terrible aristocratic, privileged, governing classes in America, 
who have so trampled on a wretched peasantry, a down- 
trodden " working class," that Christianity " has become a 
dead letter to them," steeped as they are in misery.? 

We thought the writer might have meant the slaves of 
the South. But, then, they never furnished any converts to 
Mormonism. A Mormon preacher would have found short 



The American Elephant. 35 

shrift and long rope had he tried his mission on a southern 
plantation. Besides, the "North British Review " has held that 
southern slavery is by no means an institution to put down. 
It is rather a comfortable affair than otherwise for 
"working classes." The slaves, then, cannot be meant. 
Who are ? Can any mortal tell us ? In what unwritten page 
of American history are we to find these trampled peas- 
ants, these " down-trodden poor ? " In what forest shall we 
hunt for this famous "American elephant .^ " 

We know here, but how shall we get our British friends 
to see, that this gangrene on the fair face of this continent is 
not of American, but of European, and largely of English, 
growth ? That sink of nlthiness in Utah is filled with streams 
from Liverpool. The ignorance and stupidity and vice of 
Europe made and sustain Mormonism. We venture to say 
that not one in ten of the adult population of Utah is Amer- 
ican. Left to Americans, the imposture would have died 
years ago. But Mormon missionaries found dupes in hun- 
dreds among the *' down-trodden poor," the wretched 
"working classes," the depraved and ignorant of England 
especially, — and so Mormonism has prospered. The knaves 
in Utah are American ; the "]orophets," "elders," "bishops," 
and the rest, are smart Yankees. But the dupes are from the 
doors of the North British ; the poor, deluded slaves are 
those who have enjoyed all the advantages of a country 
where, to be sure, the "poor " are never down-trodden, being 
" free-born Britons," — where they have all been taught care- 
fully the size of the "American elephant." We have no 
doubt many of them have seen the animal by this time, and 
have made up their minds he is considerably bigger than 
any Berkshire or Suffolk of their acquaintance. 

The statistics of immigration will show what we sta^t;^, 
We have ourselves seen a cargo of three hundred Mormons^ 
fresh from England, on their way to the City of the Plains, led, 
like sheep to the slaughter, by a couple of cute Yankees, 
who believed in the book of Mormon as firmly as in the 



36 Copy. 

Koran. But they did believe in getting an English peasantry 
to work for Brigham and themselves. Denmark has done 
pretty well for these scoundrels. But their big harvests 
have been reaped in England. Nowhere else have they 
found dupes so many and so gullible. 

It is no pleasure for us to w^ite this. It is a thing to be 
written of in shame and sorrow. But a little impatience is 
excusable, when we find a man writing of this blasphemous 
imposture, in the densest ignorance that he and such as he 
are responsible, before God and man, for its success and 
spread. Mormonism is to be killed in Europe, not in 
America. No " British Review^, " north or south, will ever talk 
sense on the subject till it sees that. The philosophers on 
the other side of the water must get just a step above the 
trick of abusing America for the ignorance and vice that 
Europe pours upon i::s shores, before they are competent to 
understand Mormonism. The clergy of Great Britain must be 
told that the population of Utah is largely made up of their 
own baptized parishioners, before they learn that Mormon- 
ism is not to be explained by exclamations about the degen- 
eration of Christianity in America. 

Meanwhile, from this article, and a hundred such, in 
British periodicals, we learn two things : First, that a British 
opinion, on any matter American, is worth, in wisdom, the 
cackling of an ancient goose. And, secondly, that if intelli- 
gent people can write in this way of a great kindred nation, 
and be serious, w^e have great call here to exercise forbear- 
ance and charity. We trust w^e shall never, by lack of these, 
be called upon to show how much larger are our "American 
elephants " than our cousins have been taught to think them. 



AUTHORITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 

TO set private judgment and authority as antagonistic, 
is a pet sophism of modern Romanists. Private 
judgment, according to them, is a mere delusive cheat, an 
invention of the devil. It leads everybody wrong. It is the 
source of all heresy and all schism. A man's only safety 
lies in casting it away, and accepting a guide which cannot 
err, which is always infallible and certain, and which will 
save him, for all time to come, the trouble of deciding. 

And it is really no wonder the sophism so often succeeds. 
For men like to be saved trouble. The most of us are not 
very anxious to shoulder responsibility. Vv^e are not sorry 
to shirk duty, particularly painful and dangerous duty. And 
this exercise of our judgment is a heavy responsibility, a 
dangerous duty. For we are very apt to be led wrong. We 
are often cheated. A man's private judgment cannot, in all 
cases, be depended upon. With all his care and watchful- 
ness, it is quite possible he may err seriously. It would be 
exceedingly pleasant, therefore, to many a temperament, to 
resign, once for all, this duty, and accept a guide who will 
agree to be conscience and reason for him, and save him the 
trouble of thinking henceforward. 

Finding the arrangement so successful, we have it put 
forward in a hundred different shapes. The changes are 
rung on the dangers of error, the liability of human judg- 
ment to commit that error, the convenience and necessity of 
an infallible judge, and the fact that the Church of Rome is 
that judge. And we have often been surprised at the en- 
trance some of ourselves give to the arguments of Popery 



38 Copy. 

by the admission of the sophism on which they are founded. 
It is no uncommon thing, among ourselves, to find private 
judgment arrayed as essentially antagonistic to authority. 
Now and again we hear the exercise of private judgment 
attacked, as if it were absolutely wrong, and implacably op- 
posed to the truth. We hear the authority of the Church 
set forth as though it were, of necessity, to crush out and 
destroy the vile evil of private judgment, which has led the 
world so far wrong. 

It has seemed amazing to us that men can be deluded 
by a sophism so transparent. When one is pressed, for in- 
stance, with reasons in favor of an infallible Church, it is 
manifest that the appeal is made to his private judgment. 
When a Romanist undertakes to convert a man, he appeals 
to the man's reason to effect his purpose. And if he succeed 
in his purpose, and the man turn Romanist, he becomes so 
in the exercise of that same judgment and reason. He has 
found, he believes, an infallible guide ; but he has no ground 
for the belief, after all, except that private judgment which 
he hereafter renounces. His teacher denounces private 
judgment, warns him against its exercise, urges him to ac- 
cept another and an infallible guide, and, at every step, 
appeals to this same private judgment to satisfy the change. 
Now, if private judgment is to be trusted to discover this 
guide — if, after all, a man is forced back upon the correct- 
ness of his judgment when he is questioned about the trust- 
worthiness of his authority — we really cannot see that he is 
any better off than at the first. 

" Father" Newman, for instance, in his "Apologia," con- 
gratulates himself on the peace and security which he has 
found in Popery. He has no doubts, no fears, any more. He 
is perfectly certain now. Truth comes to him through an in- 
fallible voice, — the voice of Pio Nono. He is distracted no 
more by that subtile logic which can prove black white. 
That private judgment which led him such strange dances, 
no longer disturbs him. He is in infallible hands, and has 
certain assurance now. 



Authority and Private Judgment. 39 

All very pleasant. The siren song comes sweetly over 
the sea. How delightful to cease the toil of thinking, and 

" In the hollow lotus land, 
To live and lie reclined." 

But let us inquire, '' How do you know you have an infallible 
guide } How do you know there is one ? How do you 
know Pio Nono is he } How were you brought to accept 
your present position.^" The answer, of course, is : "My 
judgment told me so. I was convinced by such and such 
weighty reasons. There is this argument and the other, do 
you not see ? Listen a moment. I can prove to you that 
there must be an infallible guide, that that guide is the 
Church of Rome ; and that the Church of Rome is head, 
not in a council, as Bossuet wickedly held by his naughty 
private judgment, but in the Pope, as I, 'Father' Newman, 
hold by my private judgment." 

That is to say, after all, it is Father Newman's private 
opinion that there is an infallible Church; it is his private 
opinion that the Church of Rome is that Church ; and 
farther, that Pio Nono is the authorized mouthpiece of the 
said infallibility. He accepts whatever Pio decides as infal- 
lible truth, and congratulates himself on his security and 
peace. " But how do you know it is infallible .^ " " Oh ! be- 
cause the Holy Father decides it. He cannot err." '' How 
do you know he cannot err.^ Let us have the truth. How 
do you — how does any man — satisfy himself of that .^ " " By 
reason," must be the only answ^er. " By the exercise of pri- 
vate judgment." 

When we investigate, we find the whole imposing fabric 
a mere delusion. A man has an infallible authority, he says. 
All very well. An infallible authority would be very con- 
venient ; but when w^e ask, we find he has only his private 
judgment for the facts. He is convinced, he is satisfied, his 
judgment and reason tell him he has discovered an unerring 
guide. Ah! but suppose his judgment and reason are no 



40 Copy. 

better there than they have been in a dozen questions where 
he confesses they failed ? 

'' Father " Nev/man informs the world that his private 
judgment was one of the most blundering, wrong-headed, 
stupid private judgments ever made. It bothered him ter- 
ribly. He looks back now and sees what a dance it led him. 
He is well rid of it now. Aye ! but his private judgment 
led him to Popery. The exercise of that naughty reason 
which he renounces led him to Rome. AVhat assurance has 
he that, in that step, his private judgment did not blunder 
worse than it ever did in his life before ? It was always 
going wTong, and, at last (we think this the most rational 
sequence), it vv^ent wrong worse than ever, and knocked its 
poor brains out ! 

The truth is, a man's judgment is a man's guide. He is 
responsible for his reason, as he is for his conscience or his 
eyes. He has no more right to abdicate judgment than he 
has to abdicate conscience or eyesight. And to argue that 
judgment is to be renounced because it is liable to err, is 
just as wise as to argue that conscience is to be renounced 
because conscience often errs. Judgment is here on proba- 
tion, as the entire nature is. It is here to be trained. As 
the will and the conscience and the affections are to be dis- 
ciplined, so also is the judgment. It may commit mistakes. 
The conscience may, the will may. It is liable to err ; so is 
every power. It is beset by dangers ; so is all of the soul 
and all of the body. It is a part of life's responsibilities to 
face dangers. It is a burden God laid upon us, when He 
put us in a w^orld of probation. There is no training without 
the possibility of error. There is no discipline possible 
without danger. When S. Peter preached on the Day of 
Pentecost, he appealed to private judgment. When S. Paul 
preached at Athens he appealed to common human reason. 
They neither appealed in vain. Whenever the Gospel is 
preached since, the appeal is always the same. The judg- 
ment and the reason arc addressed in every pulpit. When 



Authority and Private Judgment. 4^ 

the most ultramontane stickler for infallibility undertakes to 
reason, he appeals to the private judgment he condemns. 
He expects a man to accept infallibility on grounds of reason. 

We conclude, therefore, that private judgment is not an 
invention of Satan. It is not in itself evil. It is not to be 
cast aside as the infected spot in nature. It is given for 
good purposes. After all, a man must decide for himself in 
this world. His own sense and judgment must be his own 
guides. They may lead him wrong. They may lead him to 
utter ruin. They may cheat him into accepting lies, and 
stupid impositions, and blind absurdities ; into committing 
moral suicide by the abdication of reason, conscience, and 
self-guidance, for the sake of accepting a pretended infalli- 
bility. So much the worse for the man. He should have 
used his judgment better. It was here on probation, and 
he allowed it to be cheated and abused, until now it cannot 
tell truth from falsehood. He suffers the penalty of his own 
sin. He plays with sophistries. He argues with dishonest 
arguments. He defends what he does not believe. He in- 
geniously finds reasons for what he is sure is false. He ac- 
cepts things that his conscience condemns. He juggles with 
his judgment. He allows it to be swayed by passion, by 
interest, by whims even. He debauches it at last, and havuig 
spoiled his eyes, it is his own fault that he is now purblind. 

And there is the moral responsibility a man carries for 
his faith. Men tell us a man is not responsible for his be- 
lief, because belief is not voluntary. He is not responsible 
for his infidelity, because his reason or judgment will not 
allow him to accept the Gospel. We insist that a man is 
responsible for his belief or unbelief, on this ground, — that he 
is responsible for his reason and his judgment ; and if they 
lead him v/rong — lead him into infidelity or heresy — it is on 
account of their misuse. He has abused them. He has put 
cheats upon them. He has debauched his judgment in 
respect to religion, by ignorance, prejudice, whim, or passion. 
And he is responsible for his own wrong-doing. 



4^ Copy. 

That is, in conclusion, authority and private judgment 
are not antagonistic. They are both in perfect harmony. 
A man must exercise his own judgment, and fall or stand bv 
that. If he accept another's judgment, he makes it his own 
before he can act upon it. He uses his own sense, after all, 
in adopting it. But this private judgment a man must ex- 
ercise under the law of the case. He must exercise it in a 
clear, docile, teachable spirit. He must submit it to law and 
to authority. It must be judgment, not self-will ; enlightened 
sense, and not conceit or mulishness. And it is not ours to 
denounce private judgment as an enemy, for that is folly; 
but to enlighten it, th^^t it may accept truth, and not error. 



"THE BIBLE, AND THE BIBLE ALONE/' 



IT startles one to find in print, every now and again, as 
fresh as a daisy, certain simple old phrases which have 
been long since given up by all men, who are in the habit of 
doing any thinking, as hopelessly meaningless. It rather 
discourages one's hopes of his race to find innocent gentle- 
men bringing out these venerable phrases, and calling the 
world's attention to them, precisely as if their potency had 
never been called in question. 

The Bible — that is, the English translation of it — is in the 
hands of all Christians. And these Christians, nevertheless, 
find ground, in the Bible, for all their various sectarianisms. 
They have the same words, but they cannot agree on their 
meaning. The Baptist finds the Bible bitterly opposed, so 
he says, to infant baptism, and to any other method of bap- 
tizing grown folk, except that of dipping them backward. 
The Presbyterian, on the other hand, finds the Bible teaches 
infant baptism, and almost prescribes pouring or sprinkling 
as the common method of administration The same Pres- 
byterian finds Presbyterian Church government in the Bible, 
while the Congregationalist finds the Congregational govern- 
ment, and the Churchman finds Episcopacy. The " Seventh- 
Day Baptist " finds the Jewish Sabbath commanded, and 
not the Lord's Day, in the Bible all the rest of us read as 
well as he. And the Quaker appeals to the same Bible for 
refusing to be baptized or to receive the Lord's Supper, 
and for " theeing " his neighbors instead of addressing them 
in decent grammatical English. 



44 Copy. 

Every sect appeals to the Bible for its opinions. The 
most opposite senses are taken from the very same words. 
The most contradictory notions base themselves on the same 
authority, and " the Bible alone " is quoted for and against 
every known article of Christian faith or opinion. Now, all 
t.iis has been, for a long time, visible to all sects and condi- 
tions of men. They have come to their conclusions there- 
upon. They know that when the Bible is appealed to the 
controversy is by no means settled, — it has, indeed, only be- 
gun. The contest is about the meaning of the Bible, In 
law courts the debates are about the meaning of the law. 
It is only happy innocents who know nothing about law, that 
labor under the, in that case, harmless delusion of suppos- 
ing that any child can read the statute and decide its mean- 
ing on sight. The controversy is about this very meaning 
which they innocently suppose anybody can understand, and 
it takes elaborate discussion and long judicial consultation 
very often to determine it, and then the decision may be, by 
a higher tribunal, reversed. 

As a matter of fact, "the Bible, and the Bible alone," 
exists for no man. The great mass of people never can read 
" the Bible alone " in any case. They read a translation of it, 
and for the accuracy of that translation they have to depend 
on the good faith, the good sense, the learning, piety, and 
honesty of other people. A translation is always also a 
comment. It gives the translator's view of the meaning, his 
judgment about it, which may be right, but may also be 
wrong. "The Bible," therefore, to the great mass of men, 
is the Bible, plus somebody's interpretation of the Bible. 
They cannot have the Bible at all unless they take it with this 
interpretation. It is a necessary condition of their having 
any Bible at all, that they have it plus an interpretation and 
an explanation by men. Even v/hen a man can read Greek 
or Hebrew with some comfort and ease, he is not much bet- 
ter off. He cannot have " the Bible alone," do what he will. 
He takes the meaning of Greek and Hebrew words on the 



•^"The Bible, and the Bible Alone." 45 

credit of other people. He accepts the accuracy of his 
copy on the good faith of scores of different copyists and 
editors. He takes explanations of this matter and the other 
on the assurance of scores of different men. The whole 
thing has been handed down, from hand to hand, through 
generations, and his faith that the Bible is the Bible (a very 
important conviction indeed) is not derived from " the Bible 
alone," but entirely from outside testimony. 

These are reflections that have occurred to all men who 
are in the habit of doing any thinking, and it is therefore 
startling to such men to find the old phrase put forth with 
the innocent freshness and unconsciousness of a brain that 
never thinks — '' the Bible, and the Bible alone" — as if all a man 
had to do to see the truth without any possibility of ques- 
tion was to turn to the English translation of the Old and New 
Testaments and read. One wonders where such people 
live., and hov^^ they continue to go through the world with 
their eyes shut to facts that are certainly prominent enough. 

There is surely a meaning in the Bible, a truth there, 
and one plain truth and meaning, and no more. ' Infant bap- 
tism, for instance, is according to the Word of God, or it is 
not. That Word cannot allow it and forbid it at the same 
time. How shall we decide whether it is there or not.'^ 
Wlro shall decide ? Evidently, " the Bible alone " phrase 
has not decided it, and never can. Both sides claim it, 
though it is plain that one or the other must be most terri- 
bly in the wrong, must be given over to a strong delusion, 
and must believe a lie. 

And here are all the other contradictions which split up 
American Christianity into a half hundred sects. Will " the 
Bible alone " settle them.^ Do they not each appeal to the 
Bible confidently and honestly ? Does not each sect con- 
demn its opposite on the ground that it goes, in some one 
thing or other, against the. Bible ? 

Churchmen see all this, as anybody can see it who will 
look, and they are not surprised. They are surprised that 



46 Copy. 

men will learn no lessons from it, but will persist in going on 
repeating old phrases which never had any sense in their 
best estate, and have long since had what little they were 
supposed to possess beaten out of them. 

We find, for instance, in a religious paper, in a review of 
a somewhat notorious little book : " Our motto is, ' The 
Bible, and the Bible only,' and we will stand by it till the end. 
Upon this the whole matter hinges, and anything in our 
Church systems contrary to the Bible we would have ex- 
punged without compromise." 

Now, who is to decide whether anything is " contrary to 
the Bible ? " Will the gentleman who writes this undertake 
the business ? And, if he is willing, will other people accept 
his decision ? We perfectly agree with him ; we have no 
doubt all Christiams, all honest men of all names, would ac- 
cept his words : " Anything contrary to the Bible we would 
have expunged without compromise." But, we ask, who 
shall decide ? He picks out something " contrary to the 
Bible," and wants it " expunged." We insist that it perfectly 
agrees with the Bible, and shall not be "expunged." Who 
shall decide between us ? " The Bible only ? " Why, it is 
the very Bible that is in question ! The thing to be decided 
is, whether this thing he wants " expunged " is, or is not, Bible. 

It will hardly do to say that any Christian man desires 
to retain any belief contrary to the Word of God. It cer- 
tainly will not do to say that any respectable body of Chris- 
tians, organized as a Church, have deliberately made up their 
minds to hold a faith point blank against the Bible. We are 
altogether too charitable to believe that of any decent Chris- 
tian man or Christian Church. They are just as anxious as the 
writer of the above phrase to " expunge " everything " con- 
trary to the Bible." But who will tell them just what is 
"contrary," that they may "expunge " it .^ Our friend, like 
scores of other people, is undoubtedly ready to tell them. 
But the trouble is, they have as good a right to their opinion 
as he has, and we, who are indifferent to his notions and 



"The Bible, and the Bible Alone." 47 

theirs equally, have to confess that they are just as likely to 
be right as he. Still, he, like other men who are certain 
they are right in their notions, and who have no doubt their 
interpretation of the Bibe is infallible, has a way of explain- 
ing all these differences of opinion, and it is only fair to al- 
low him to state it. 

When these men speak of things " contrary to the Bible," 
they are not talking vaguely. They know what they mean. 
When they say "the Bible only," they express something 
definite to themselves. They mean by "the Bible," the 
Bible as they understand it, — the Bible, plus the sense they 
give the Bible. Meanwhile, it is very apparent, even to 
them, that other people do not find in the Bible the same 
sense they do. Now, this might make some men doubt 
a little whether their interpretation is as certain as they have 
fancied. But it never gives any doubt to the men who talk 
of "the Bible, and the Bible only," and who stand ready to 
set us all right with infallible promptitude, and " expunge " 
everything " contrary to the Bible " on sight. That nine- 
tenths of the people, with the same English translation they 
possess, and with at least hearts as honest and brains as 
clear, differ totally from them on the question, never disturbs 
their comfortable complacency. They go on urging "the 
Bible, and the Bible only," with a heavy pertinacity which is 
almost sublime in its determination to learn nothing. They 
have a method of explaining things which allows them still to 
insist that if you take " the Bible, and the Bible only," you 
must inevitably think as they do. Here it is : " We hold that 
the reason why so many who have the open Bible hold un- 
scriptural views, is because they either never read it at all, 
or read it without seeking explanation from above ; we also 
hold that the smallest school-girl can know more about God, 
if she reads His word prayerfully and humbly, than the 
most learned divine studying it in his own wisdom and intel- 
lectual power." 

Surely, this is modesty in excess ! We differ from a 



48 Copy. 

gentleman on some question of religious doctrine. The 
gentleman appeals to '' the Bible, and the Bible only.*' We 
accept the appeal, and prove, according to our conscience 
and intellect, that his notions are not in the Bible at all, and 
that our view has plain Scripture in its favor, and, instead 
of our shaking, in the slightest degree, his self-complacency, 
he turns about and tells us we do not say our prayers ! If 
we were illuminated by wisdom from above, we would per- 
fectly agree with him. We do not agree with him, and 
therefore we are not so illuminated. For he is ! In other 
words, the claim is that he is divinely inspired to interpret 
the English Bible correctly. That, we suppose, expressed 
or unexpressed, is the way in which the mass who have taken 
"the Bible, and the Bible only," that is, the Bible and th^ir 
private reason upon it, explain the fact that people differ 
from them. It is a very curious culmination of private in- 
terpretation, and the charity it begets. 

The Baptist thinks that if the Presbyterian would only 
" seek explanation from above " he would stop baptizing 
infants. The Presbyterian, in his secret soul, believes the 
Baptist would baptize his children if only he would pray 
heartily for help to understand the Bible. There is a vague 
feeling that if men would only ask for heavenly illumination, 
they would see the true meaning of the Bible, and, therefore, 
smce they differ from us, who have the true meaning, it is 
certain they do not say their prayers heartily, and therefore 
do not get that illumination. 

It is very curious, however, as the end of the thing, that 
we should all conclude that those who differ from us, or, as 
our friend says, '' who hold unscriptural views (for, differing 
from us and "holding unscriptural views" is the same thing, 
of course), either do not read the Bible, or do not pray ! 

John Wesley knelt down, Bible before him, and prayed 
for an explanation about "election." He got up an Ar- 
minian, and staid so till he died. George Whitfield knelt 
down, at the same tune, Bible before him, and prayed for an 



"The Bible, and the Bible Alone." 49 

"explanation from above," and got up a high Calvinist, and 
staid so till he died. They are both, we trust, in Paradise 
now, and have learned that Calvinism and Arminianism are 
about equally valuable in this universe, and that the world 
can get on very satisfactorily without the poor rags and tags 
of either dead ism. Their earthly experience, however, is 
not very encouraging to either the theory, the chamy, or 
the humility contained in the extract above. 

3 



''THE BIBLE, AND THE BIBLE ALONE/' 

II. 

HOW shall we know that the Bibles we have are gen- 
uine ? We mean, suppose there is no question but 
that a Revelation was once made, and that it was com- 
mitted to writing by inspired men, how are we to become 
certain that the writings we now have are true copies of the 
originals ? Granting that S. John wrote a Gospel, that S. 
Paul wrote various Epistles, to the Romans and others, how 
do we know that the writings we now have under the names 
of S. John and S. Paul are the actual productions of those 
Apostles ? 

This, it will be perceived, is a very different question 
from that of inspiration or authority. It is a question about 
a material fact, a question of the identity of a visible mat- 
ter. Are our Bibles genuine Bibles ? Do they contain the 
writings which were first published under the names of 
Apostles and Prophets ? This question is one of fact^ we 
say. Clearly, it is not a question which " the Bible alone " 
will settle. There is in the Bible itself no table of contents, 
no inspired summary of the books and chapters. And if 
there were, we would have to go outside the Book itself to 
decide whether the books and chapters in our modern Bibles 
are those which were contained in the Bibles of the second, 
third, and fourth centuries. 

This question of fact — are our Bibles genuine copies of 
the original 1 — must be settled by outside testimony. We must 
appeal to the ancient writers, to the ancient Christian writers 
in fact, that is, in other words, to the early fathers. We 



"The Bible, and the Bible Alone." 5^ 

find these men, speaking and writing about a Book, — the 
Bible, the inspired Word of God, the Old and New Testa- 
ments. We find them quoting it, mentioning its authors, 
citing short passages and long passages from S. John or S. 
Paul or S. Luke, by name. We find them doing this in 
Rome and in Carthage, in Alexandria and in Jerusalem, in 
Constantinople and in Gaul. All over the world, men 
writing in Greek, in Latin, in Syriac, men divided from each 
other by vast spaces of territory, separated in language and 
in nationality, — we find quoting the Bible. In sermons, in 
formal treatises on theology, in familiar letters to friends — 
in all sorts of productions and in all connections — we find 
them referring to, talking about, and citing the words of a 
certain Book. 

We have a Book which professes to be the same. Is it ? 
We appeal to those early writers to find out. Manifestly, 
there is no other way. We cannot expect any miraculous 
interference to assure us of this question of fact. No 
mental or moral illumination can be expected to tell us 
whether our Bible is the real primitive Bible. We therefore 
appeal to the fathers. And that appeal assures us of the 
truth and genuineness of our present copies of the Word of 
God. It is clear they had copies identical with our own. 
Wliat we read, they read. They had the same Gospels, the 
same Epistles, the same Acts of the Apostles, the same 
Revelation of S. John. They quote as w^e might. They 
cite the w^ords as they are before us, and in the same con- 
nection. We decide that they had the same Bible identically. 
The extent to which this identification may be carried is 
beyond what most people think. It has been said that if 
the Bible were lost — that is, if every copy now in existence 
were destroyed — the entire volume might be restored from 
the writings of the first four centuries. It was so quoted, so 
preached, so commented on, that it actually passed do^ify 
into the Christian writings of those ages, and remains there. 

Such identification is possible in the case of no other 



52 Copy. 

ancient writing. We are quite certain that our copies of the 
.^neid are genuine, that our " Commentaries on the GaUic 
War " are the very " Commentaries " written by Caesar, but 
that certainty is founded on comparatively slight proof. 
These books are indeed mentioned, quoted, and described 
and attributed to Virgil and Caesar, respectively, by writers 
from their own day down ; but for one writer who testifies to 
them, a score testify to the Bible, and for one line quoted 
from them, chapters are quoted from the Old and New Testa- 
ments, and for one author who comments on them, fifty com- 
ment upon, explain, and cite whole books of the Revelation. 

To decide this matter of fact, then, we appeal to the tes- 
timony of the fathers. That testin^iony is overwhelming. It 
is such testimony as exists for no other ancient writings. It 
is contemporaneous, continuous, unbroken, straight from the 
first century until to-day. It is so because the Bible, unlike 
any other book, was committed to the jealous watch and guard 
of an organized body whose business was to make it known 
to the ends of the earth. In this sense, the Church is '' the 
pillar and ground of the truth," in that it is the testimony to 
the genuineness of "the Word of God for all time. 

It makes no difference, then, we see, how much a man 
may mistake " the fathers " and their uses, how firmly he 
may have the notion of " the Bible, and the Bible alone," he 
must go to these fathers to decide th€ very vital question 
whether he has a Bible at all. Without them, he is utterly 
adrift. He has a Bible, but he cannot tell whether it is a 
real Bible or a sham, the genuine word or a forgery of the 
ninth century. It is on the testimony of the fathers, cf 
primitive antiquity, of the early Church, that he rests his 
belief that his Bible answers to the genuine Bible as it was 
given. The Bible, therefore, comes to no man as a book by 
itself. It comes surrounded by authority from without. It 
comes with testimonials and evidences of an organic body. 
The existence of the Church is the evidence of the truth it 
contains, as the testimony of the Church is the evidence of 



''The Bible, and the Bible Alone." 53 

the genuineness and sameness of the copies. Since this 
question is to be decided in this way, since we find we can 
so decide it, is it wise to drop the testimony of the fathers at 
this point, and having used them to settle the genuineness 
of our copies of the Bible, shall we dismiss them as of no 
further use ? 

Here is just the broad difference between the Churchman 
and the man who thinks the Bible is to be interpreted by 
his own private judgment alone. The Churchman believes 
Christianity, like the Bible, to be one. As the Bible never 
could be added to or taken from when once given, so the 
Churchman believes that Christianity cannot be increased or 
diminished by men. He holds that a complete and perfect 
system was given once for all, that the terms of salvation, 
the substance of the faith, were announced at the first. 
The primitive Church, with the Bible in its hand, went forth 
preaching a definite faith and a fixed system, — its interpre- 
tation of the meaning and purpose of the Bible in life. 
Whatever faith was essential in the first century is essential 
in the nineteenth. Whatever divine order and discipline was 
established then, was established for all time. Whatever 
were the terms and means of salvation then, are the terms 
and means while the world stands. 

There was a Gospel preached then, a body of doctrine 
a method of salvation, and a rule of Christian belief and 
practice which the Bible contained for men from the first. 
The Churchman believes that these are essential to the end. 
He reflects that the men who first received the Bible were 
men who knew the authors of the New Testament face to 
face, that they heard Apostles preach and Evangelists ex- 
plain the Gospel, that they actually heard " the whole coun- 
sel of God " from the lips of Apostles, before they ever saw 
a h'ne of the New Testament ! that, therefore, they knew, as 
no men can know now, exactly what the meaning and pur- 
pose of the writings are. They had the viva voce explana- 
tions of the Book from the men who wrote it. They heard 



54 Copy. 

the substance of it before it was written at all. They 
believed the Gospel, they lived in it and died in it, were 
fully instructed in "the whole counsel of God," were "wise 
unto salvation " before they had ever read a line of the 
written New Testament ! 

And so, believing the Bible to be one, the Churchman 
appeals to primitive antiquity to discover whether his Bible 
is the genuine Bible of the primitive Church. He finds it 
is. The appeal settles that question beyond dispute. 

But as the Bible is one, so its meaning is one. It must 
contain one story, and tell one faith, and reveal one Gospel. 
There are disputes about its meaning and scope. This man 
insists on one Gospel, this other man on another. Both 
appeal to the Bible. Both talk about "the Bible alone." 
The Churchman sees their difference can never be decided. 
They might as well undertake to settle the question of the 
genuineness of a modern copy, by refusing to look farther 
than the copy itself. Therefore, he appeals to the primitive 
Church for this matter also. He says " let the men who 
testify to the genuineness of the book, testify also to its 
meaning. What sense did they get from it in the very days 
when men lived who heard S. Peter and S. John teach and 
preach 1 What doctrine did they find in it in the very 
Churches where these Apostles were pastors 1 Let us call 
in the ancient witnesses for this thing also." 

This is really, — this, and no more — the meaning of a 
Churchman's appeal to antiquity. He does not consider 
" the fathers " of any century infallible. He cites them as 
Avitnesses for the doctrine, precisely as he cites them as 
witnesses for the book. He considers that the Bible con- 
tained, for the men of the earliest day, a definite system of' 
Christian faith and order. He sees that the written New 
Testament grew into existence, was written, collected, and 
published under that definite system, and therefore agreeable 
to it. And he infers that that system is the true sense and 
meaning of the written book, that the Christianity in the life 



"The Bible, and the Bible Alone." 55 

and action of the primitive Church is the true interpreter of 
the same Christianity lying in the pages of the written Word. 
He therefore turns to the contemporary witnesses to find 
what that living Christianity was. 

Take the things that divide Christians, that one seer 
claims are in the Bible, and another sect claims are not 
there — any of these things — it is manifest " the Bible alone " 
will not settle the difference. The Unitarian asserts that 
the Bible does not teach our Lord's divinity. The orthodox 
believer asserts it does. Both, strangely enough, claim the 
Bible. Suppose they appeal to the early time. Suppose 
they wisely conclude that Christians from the first, the con- 
verts of the Apostles themselves, knew what the Apostles 
meant to convey as their sense in this matter. The evidence 
is overwhelming that from the very first Christians worshipped 
Christ as God. The fact was so notorious that it was a 
heathen reproach, " the worship of a crucified God." 

Take the question of Episcopacy and Congregationalism 
or Presbyterianism. Unquestionably, there is some form of 
government, some apostolic organization in the Nevv^ Testa- 
ment. The Churchman claims the written record. The 
Congregationalist claims it. The Presbyterian claims it. 
The Romanist claims it. " The Bible alone " will not de- 
cide it, for the question is about the meaning. 

Suppose, again, they conclude that in the earliest Church, 
when the Apostles were living, or men whom Apostles had 
taught, it is reasonably certain that any uniform and uni- 
versal organization, existing all over the w^orld, would not 
be contrary, but agreeable to the intention of the Apostles, 
and consequently of Christ. And suppose they ask what 
this organization was, — an organization which universally 
existed before the New Testament was collected, and the 
canon closed. The evidence, again, is overwhelming that 
all Christians, from world's end to world's end, were mem- 
bers of one Church, with one uniform government of 
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, and no Pope, and that this 



56 Copy. 

unity and this government were matters of such notoriety 
that heathens knew them just as well as Christians. 

And so with any matter which may be in dispute. The 
fathers may be cited to testify to a matter of fact, — What 
was the faith and practice of Christians in their day } We 
do not cite them to ask their private opinions. We do not 
care, for the purposes of this inquiry, what their private 
opinions are. We ask their testimony about Church, Faith, 
and Practice. 

Tertullian, for instance, advises against the immediate 
baptism of infants. He argues in favor of postponing it till 
the child has come to years of discretion, if there be no danger 
of death. And Baptists sometimes cite Tertullian as a 
" father," on their side. The Churchman cites him for the 
direct opposite, because he wants his testimony to the prac- 
tice of the Church, and not Tertullian's private notions. 
His testimony is the strongest that infant baptism was the 
established custom of the Church, else he, Tertullian, would 
not have been called upon to persuade anybody to delay 
it ! His negative testimony is stronger than any positive. 

"The Bible, and the Bible alone," an impossible formula 
as we see, must be changed to one more in accordance with 
the Bible itself. That never teaches " the Bible, and Bible 
alone." It authorizes no man to suppose his private judg- 
ment infallible. It does not establish one Pope, still less a 
million. It bids us, among other things, to "stand in the/ 
old paths," to "hold fast the form of sound words," and by 
implied command, to " continue in the Apostles' doctrine 
and fellowship." 

It is beginning to be seen and confessed by the best, the 
wisest, and the calmest-thoughted men of all names — Greek, 
Roman, and Protestant — that " the historic method," in other 
words, the appeal to the Primitive Church — to "the old 
paths " — is the only method in which lies a hope of unity 
and peace. 



OPINIONS AND "THE FATHERS/' 

ONE would suppose that by this time members of the 
Church, at least, must understand what is the position 
of- those ancient teachers and doctors who are commonly- 
called "the Fathers," in deciding disputed matters of re- 
ligious opinion or practice. 

And yet, one must never take too much for granted, and 
it comes to us not infrequently that we are apt to take too 
much for granted in this matter, and that there is far less in- 
telligence on the subject of ''the fathers," even among 
Churchmen, than we commonly suppose. 

We find, for instance, that there is a vague sort of 
idea that Churchmen consider a sort of ancient writers, called 
*' the fathers," as it were quasi- or j-^/;//-inspired, as men whose 
opinions and notions are a sort of secondary revelation, and 
that they cite these writers against the members of other 
bodies who cling to the " Bible alone," under an impression 
that a large amount of " the fathers " can overbalance a 
small amount of the Bible, or jelse that " the fathers " are 
the authorized interpreters of the Bible, by official right. 
Therefore, we are asked what we think about this opinion of 
this father, or that queer notion of the other father ; asked 
whether they do not contradict each other's notions as com- 
monly as any other class of writers, and whether their writ- 
ings are not garbled, etc. 

We will state, as shortly and clearly as we can, the real 
place which the fathers have held in the minds of the most 
learned divines of the Church of England. 

In the first place, they are ancient and venerable Chris- 

^* 
o 



5^ ' Copy. 

tian doctors, revered for their age and character, and their 
words have, to a thoughtful reader, all the weight which the 
w^ords of such characters bear. Several of them — the Apos- 
tolic Fathers, so-called — lived in personal intercourse with 
the Apostles of our Lord, and were their disciples ; learned 
their doctrine from their lips. Such were Clement and 
Polycarp and Ignatius. 

The mere time and circumstances give these men's words 
the greatest weight and value. But more, the men them- 
selves were men of the holiest character and the purest lives, 
and were martyred for their faith. What few fragments re- 
main to us of them are reckoned, from these considerations, 
as standing next — only as uninspired stands after inspired — 
to the epistles of the Apostles themselves. They are the 
links which connect the New Testament Church with the 
Church of the next ages. 

The mere opinions of such men would be reverently re- 
garded. Their simplicity, their primitive plainness and lack 
of art or human wit or learning, increase rather than lessen 
our profound regard for these sons of the dawn, these first 
fruits of the Gospel, who lived and taught and suffered, while 
the footsteps of the Lord were fresh yet on the hills of Pales- . 
tine, and the clouds had scarcely lost the purple and gold . 
with which they flamed as He ascended to the Father. 

Coming down from them, we find another and a different 
class of men, who are still called fathers, — men of learning, 
men of the greatest genius and the noblest gifts sometimes, 
sometimes merely honest men, earnest bishops or presbyters, 
who did their day's work well. These being farther removed 
from the beginning, deserve less regard, from the mere cir- 
cumstance of their period, and yet, compared with us, they, 
in the third and fourth centuries, were at the fountain-head. 
These men have each their peculiar worth, and some, con- 
sidered as doctors, are more important and valuable, and 
some are less so. We have Clement of Alexandria, and 
Origen, representing the vast learning and daring speculation 



Opinions and ''The Fathers." 59 

of the school of iVlexandria. We have Justin Martyr, phi- 
losopher as well as Christian doctor ; Tertullian, the learned 
presbyter of Africa ; Cyprian, the great bishop of Carthage ; 
and, as we pass into the next age, a constellation of splendid 
names in Greek and Latin, who wrote and taught when all of 
intellectual force and creative energy in the whole empire 
instinctively sought the Church and the service of religion. 

To this time belongs Augustine, the ever young, alive to- 
day in every idea, as he was fourteen hundred years ago ; 
Jerome, his friend and compeer; Athanasius, Basil, the 
Gregories, Chrysostom, and those other great bishops who 

" Spake grandly the last Greek," 

and an array of others, east and west, w^hom we do not 
name. Now, first of all, it is evident enough that these 
writers have the common value that belongs to all writers of 
learning and genius, and each has his own, and stands alone. 
Considered as doctors and teachers, they, like all such, have 
their value, entirely irrespective of their age or place. And 
no man, w^hose judgment or learning is of any value, will 
venture to give these, as a class, among the doctors and 
teachers of all time, any place lower than the highest. With 
some of them — Athanasius or Augustine, for instance — he 
will scarcely venture to compare any man in any age of the 
Church. He will place them on their pedestals in lonely 
grandeur, crowned, palmed, and unapproachable, — the teach- 
ers of the ages, the deathless masters of the world. Their 
opinions are as important as other men's convictions. Their 
views, when he differs from them, he will name w^ith profound 
regard. Their very errors are the errors of men of sublime 
genius and deep spiritual insight, — errors which are guesses 
flashed at unknown truths. 

The fathers, as we see them, are, in one point of view, 
doctors of the Church, — the oldest and greatest doctors. 
They are to be valued and used as one would value and use 
other learned doctors and teachers. They are not infallible ; 



6o Copy. 

they are not inspired. Moreover, they are of different de- 
grees of importance, and of different weight. But when we 
speak of " the fathers " w^e do not consider them merely as 
learned teachers, and think of them as we do of learned 
men now. Instinctively, we all feel that they are more than 
this, that these men have a peculiar place not conferred by 
their learning and genius, but by their character and 
the circumstances of their times, which makes them differ 
widely from any learned doctors of the present. And it is 
this peculiar place which makes them ^'fathers." They are, 
that is, witnesses, and in that character one of them is quite 
as good as another of the same age ; in that Cyprian, the 
plain, unlearned, and practical man, is of as much value as 
Tertullian, the genius ; and Irenaeus stands on the same 
level as Clement of Alexandria, who walked the whole circle 
of human knowledge like a master. It is in their character 
as witnesses that the fathers are usually spoken of as stand- 
ing alone. It is in that character that they are misunder- 
stood, and that what is sa.d of them is so generally misap- 
prehended. 

Suppose the fact be admitted that there was a revelation ; 
that it existed in the form of a number of books in the third 
century ; how do we know that the present Old and New Tes- 
iments are that revelation.-^ How do we know that the 
, ^spels v/e now possess are the genuine gospels, the epistles 
tiie genuine epistles, and that they are not corrupted oi 
jorgeries 1 The answer is very simple : From the days of 
^he Apostles down, we find a number of writers, in different 
puntries and in different languages, of different intellectual 
oalibre, and of various degrees of learning, all quoting, 
naming, and referring to the various books of the New Tes- 
tament and the Old, just as writers would do now, and we 
find, from these quotations and references, that the books are 
the identical books we now possess. Writers in Africa, in 
Europe and Asia, writers in Greek and Latin and "Syriac, 
writers in Alexandria and in Lyons, in Jerusalem and in 



Opinions and "The Fathers." 6i 

Rome, in Carthage and Antioch, men utter strangers to each 
other m all things else, quote a set of writings, and quote 
them all alike, take from them precisely the same words and 
phrases, and refer to them by the same titles, and attribute 
them to the same authors ; and these writings are the very same 
vrc quote, and the \vords, phrases, and authors are the words, 
phrases, titles, and authors of our own Bible. 

We find this beginning in the first century, at the very 
time the books of the New Testament were first published. 
They are found quoted by writers then. We find the same 
thing going on in the second century, in the third and fourth, 
and so on straight down ; hundreds of independent writers in 
all parts of the world, engaged in quoting, writing about, and 
commenting upon the very books which are to-day found 
inside our familiar Bibles. And by this we prove that the 
Bible is no invention, but the genuine book which has been 
in the hands of Christians always. The Christian wTiters 
are our witnesses. The fathers are our testimony to this 
truth. 

It is plain, any one of them is as good as another for 
this. The plainest and most illiterate writer in the third 
century, quoting the Gospel of S. John, is just as good a 
witness that that Gospel was then in existence, and was con- 
ceded to be S. John's, as if he were the most learned man, 
or the greatest genius who ever put pen in ink. 

Still more : Any heathen or any heretic, of the same 
century, who might have cited the same Gospel to ridicule 
or confute it, would be just as good a witness to its existence 
and to its being the same we now have, as if he were the 
most learned and orthodox father. 

This value of the fathers of any century as witnesses is, 
it will be observed, entirely irrespective of their learning 
or their wisdom. It depends entirely on their age. They 
were there, — that is the consideration which gives them 
their unique position in Christian literature. 

The wisest and most profoundly learned man that ever 



62 Copy. 

lived may be alive to-day, and his learning and wisdom may 
give him great weight, but on this matter he is perfectly 
without value. He is no witness to any Bible but that of 
the nineteenth century, and one line from the humblest 
writer of the second will be more valuable in settling the 
question of the authenticity of any book or chapter, than 
all the folios that could be written by all the doctors of all 
Vhe universities. 

It is the fathers, therefore, who assure us we have a 
Bible, and not a forgery, or a corrupted and garbled copy. 
We owe it to them that we are sure of the purity of the 
Word of God which we possess. They have so studied it, 
so written upon it, so quoted it, in every age, that it is 
identified beyond dispute. But this, too, is recognized by 
all scholars, and Churchmen are not singular in attributing 
this place to the fathers. And yet, one would suppose that 
they who understood this use of the fathers might easily un- 
derstand our farther place for them as witnesses, not only to 
the purity of the text, but to the purity of the doctrine. 

Suppose the fact be admitted, as we suppose it must be, 
that all saving truth was known to the Churches of the Apos- 
tles, that the sense put upon revelation, the meaning at- 
tached to the Gospel and to the sacraments in the days of 
the Apostles was the true meaning, that men are to be saved 
to-day on the same faith and the same principles on which 
they were saved always. And suppose, farther, that we are 
in doubt as to what those principles and what that faith, in 
some respects, was. The evident answer is, " Consult the 
New Testament." 

The New Testament is thereupon consulted, and lo ! it 
is found that ten different men find that it means ten differ- 
ent things ! so variously have they been brought up, so 
differently have they been trained, influenced, and preju- 
diced. We then say there is no need of doubt on this mat- 
ter. There was a body created to be the witness and keeper 
of Holy Writ. It has kept it, as we have seen, purely and 



Opinions and ''The Fathers." 63 

faithfully. It has not only kept it, — it has also had a mean- 
ing for it. It has had, in every age, a practical result in 
living principles which it has taught as the faith of Christ. 

These witnesses for the genuineness of the Scriptures in 
any age will be found witnesses also for the practical faith 
of the Church in any age, in just the same way. 

Suppose, for instance, the question is whether the Scrip- 
tures teach the Divinity of our Lord. The orthodox say 
they do ; the Unitarian, with the same Scriptures, denies 
that they convey that meaning. Suppose it be admitted, as 
it is certainly the part of common-sense to admit it, that 
w^hatever was taught in the Church immediately after the 
Apostles, by men who themselves remembered the Apostles 
and their companions, whatever was taught at that day as 
essential to salvation, as a necessary and vital part of the 
Christian covenant, would be pretty sure to be the real sense 
of Scripture on this matter. 

To get at this we should consult the writers of that time, 
— the fathers of that century. We would not consult them, it 
is clear, for their private opinion on the matter. They would 
be witnesses, and the value of their testimony would not 
depend on their own wisdom or piety. The most illiterate 
father could tell us as well as the most learned what the 
Church in his time, in his own city, recognized as her own 
doctrine on this subject. 

Still more : A heretic who might be writing to confute 
the doctrine would be just as good a witness that it w^as the 
doctrine as he. And more yet : A heathen ridiculing the 
doctrine would be as good a witness for its existence as 
either of them. Pliiay, in writing to Trajan about the 
Christians whom he was persecuting in Bythinia, under the 
imperial edict, in the beginning of the second century, tells 
us " they sung a hymn to Christ as God," and is just the 
very best witness we can have that Christians at that time, 
almost before S. John was cold in his grave, were worship- 
ping our Saviour as " very God of very God." 



64 Copy. 

The theory is that the Gospel was given perfectly at the 
first ; that, as it was preached and held in the first century, 
it must be preached and held to the last ; that every addi- 
tion to the faith of the covenant is a corruption ; that what- 
ever is later than the Gospels, as an article of the covenant, 
is false. Therefore, when a point is disputed, we appeal to 
antiquity. We say, " Point out its beginning ; tell us when 
this that you deny started. It cannot be done. We can 
show you a chain of witnesses for it from this day to the 
days of the Apostles." 

Not a chain of witnesses, it will be observed, who held it 
as a private opinion, but of witnesses who taught it and held 
it as the public and confessed faith of the Church in each 
age. 

To test the principle by the matter of the Episcopacy, 
we simply challenge any man to find in any age of the 
Church, back to the days of the Apostles, a Church that is 
not Episcopal. We challenge him to tell us who started the 
Episcopacy, when and where we first hear of it as a new 
thing. Back to the days of the Apostles, in every age, 
writers in all parts of the world, in every language, and of 
every race, testify to its existence as the uniform, settled, 
unquestioned order and government of the Church of God. 

Here there is the peculiar and special consideration 
which makes the fathers what they are. They are witnesses 
to the Catholic faith of the Catholic Church. In this office 
their opinions are of no concern. They may be wise or 
foolish, but their private opinions are not what we seek. We 
ask them what the great universal Church believed in their 
day ; and when their private opinions are against her prac- 
tice or her teaching, they are just as good witnesses as when 
they agree with them. When Tertullian turned Montanist, 
and wrote against the practices and opinions of the Church, 
he was just as good a witness as to what those practices and 
opinions were as when he wrote in their favor. When he 
advises a mother not to have her child baptized until it can. 



Opinions and "The Fathers." 65 

be taught, unless it be in danger of dying, he is as good a 
witness that infant baptism was the practice of the Church 
as if he had written a book to defend it We want to know 
what the Church beUeved, not what TertulHan thought. 

When we consult the fathers as witnesses, therefore, be it 
understood that their private opinions, good or bad, are not 
in question. They are consulted to find the acknowledged 
faith and practice of the Church, as they are to find the ac- 
knowledged and received canon and version of the Old and 
New Testaments. They are cited into court as witnesses in 
either case to a matter of fact w^hich depends on no man's 
opinion. The only consideration is their credibility and 
competency as witnesses. 



AN ILLUSTRATION. 

SOME while since, Professor Morley, of England, pub- 
lished an article in the London " Times," announcing 
the fact that he had discovered a short poem by John Milton. 
He sent the poem with the communication. It had been 
found on a blank leaf of an early copy of Milton's works in 
the British Museum, and was signed, apparently, J. M. The 
discovery at once brought the critics down on the poem. One 
able critic was sure it was Milton's. He only could have woven 
'^ the subtle melody " of its lines. Another, Lord Winchel- 
sea, considered the poem mere rubbish, and that if Milton 
wrote it at all, it must have been " in his dotage." 

So the fight goes on, and opinions are divided. Authori- 
ties, critics, experts, fight on both sides. The case probably 
will never be decided. It is suggestive, as illustrating the 
value of a great deal of knowing and conceited learning, so 
called, w^hich has imposed on many unsuspecting people. 

There are learned gentlemen in Germany — philologists, 
critics. Biblical scholars, etc. — who claim to be able to tell the 
world, by internal evidence, and comparison of style, every 
chapter and verse which S. Paul or S. Peter wrote. They 
have decided what is the " Pauline style," what the " Petrine 
method," what the " Johannian arrangement." Such is their 
jargon; and they will reject this verse because it is clearly 
not "Petrine," and this chapter because it is evidently not 
"Pauline," and this whole epistle because "it is not the 
method of John ; " and some wise Englishman or American 
will take these German doctors at their word, and will inform 
us that " it is decided that this chapter was not written by 



An Illustration. 67 

Peter," or "that the ablest critics have proved that this 
epistle is not by John." 

And this sort of stuff has imposed on a great many well- 
meaning and harmless converts, when put forth in a learned 
jargon by a great many very shallow socialists. 

It is worth considering that Greek and Hebrew are not 
the native tongues of any regularly born German. He 
speaks, naturally, guttural " Hoch-Deutch." He learns 
Greek and Hebrew painfully out of grammars and diction- 
aries. He has the birch applied in the process, and digs 
away patiently under that stimulus to attain the requisite 
modicum of each tongue, to enable him to talk and write 
about " Petrine," and "Pauline," " Jehovistic," " Elohistic," 
etc. And this man, wearily picking up the dried bits of a 
dead tongue, out of grammar and vocabulary, utterly ig- 
norant of its living sound, utterly unable to pronounce a 
word of it as the men who spoke it did, will take it on him 
to tell us that a production universally attributed to S. Paul, 
from the earliest day to his own, for some fancied peculi- 
arity in construction or phrase, is not his, and cannot be his, 
because "criticism has decided the question." 

And now, here, as if to make inextinguishable laughter 
over the whole learned nonsense, comes a poem, in English 
— the plain English we all speak, English a child can read — 
written certainly in London itself, by some one contempo- 
rary with Milton, and Englishmen, fellow-countrymen of 
Milton, fellow townsmen of his, familiar with every line he 
ever wrote, — critics, experts, poets even themselves, like 
Lord Winchelsea, cannot tell us whether this short poem in 
the language they learned in their cradles is John Milton's 
or not. 

It gives us a good notion of the value of the German 
" Petrine " and " Pauline " dialect, and its high authority. But 
what does it suggest as to the value of the poor echo of that 
talk that one hears in the United States ? 



POPES— SMALL AND GREAT. 

POPERY is rooted in the inherent sinfuhiess of human 
nature. There have been popes always ; there always 
will be popes. Moreover, there are popes who are very 
enthusiastic Protestants. Lideed, Protestantism, of the 
active and restlessly protesting kind, always creates popes ; 
and the Greek Church is perfectly right in calling the great 
Roman pope " the first Protestant. 

A Pope is a gentleman who considers himself infallible 
m religious matters, and who requires everybody else to 
accept his opinions. He has no doubt at all of himself. He 
firmly believes he has been let into the secrets of divine 
wisdom, that he is especially illuminated and guided by 
divine truth. He makes his views and opinions the measure 
and touchstone of orthodoxy. He accepts or condemns 
according to the rule of his own infallibility. That he does 
not call it his own infallibility is a matter of no consequence. 
No true pope, Roman or otherwise, ever does talk about his 
own infallibility. He has a better way of getting on than 
that. He has the fixed conviction that his opinions are also 
his Maker's, and therefore he is quite satisfied to talk of the 
divine infallibility, because, as divinity always thinks as he 
does, that settles the matter satisfactorily enough. 

It makes no difference in the question of popery, whether 
there be a large or small following of the particular pope. 
The pope himself is quite unmoved by any consideration of 
numbers. A true pope will hold his own notions in the face 
of a world that rejects them, and will consign the entire 



Popes- — Small and Great. 69 

human family to perdition in the cahnest manner possible, 
as hopelessly deluded by the enemy. 

The Roman pope differs from the great herd of popes 
in all ages, in the fact that his popery is organized into a 
coherent system, and acts by fixed laws. But it is no more 
certain and infallible, in its own opinion, than the less 
definitely organized popery of the hosts of small anti-Roman 
popes. 

It would be amusing, were it not so tragical, to read 
Luther's letter, for instance, about the Moravians, or ^' Pi- 
cards," as he calls them. Luther, as we all know, was a 
very large sort of pope indeed, but how surely convinced 
that his opinions were infallible, perhaps most readers do not 
fully appreciate. Luther was engaged in his figb" with the 
other great pope at Rome, and, while in the thick of it, 
having convinced himself the other one was Anti^-hrist (all 
anti-popes are Antichrists), was visited by some of the Mo- 
ravians, who wished to efi'ect an understanding between his 
new Protestant movement and their old one. Luther heard 
them, and writes to Melancthon : " Ambassadors from the 
Picards have been with me, and have explained their faith. 
Unless they deceive me, they are sound in many thin^^s, but 
in many things are in error, I fear; so, nowhere in the vrorld 
is the truth held. All the world — Romanists and Protectants, 
Calvinists and Moravians — all were wrong, because they did 
not agree v/ith Martin Luther. He was the infallible stand- 
ard of divine truth. 

The ground is always, practically, the same. The Roman 
pope split the Christian Church, excommunicating half of it 
at a stroke, because it would not accept his notions as divine 
truth. On the same issue he keeps it divided to-day, pro- 
testing against Greek and Anglican, against Lutheran and 
Calvinist. Martin Luther did the same in the battle with 
Zwingli. And his followers kept the continental reformation 
split, and, by the suicidal strife between Lutheran and Cal- 
vinistic Confession, managed to betray half Germany to 



70 Copy. 

Rome again. It has been popery that has caused all the 
schisms and heresies in Christendom, all the wearisome 
heart-sickening discords and divisions which have been the 
bane of religion. Some pope always^ small pope or big 
pope, has been so sure that he was infallible, that his notions 
were the law of God, that he has been ready to divide the 
Church, and set Christian men against each other in fiercest 
bitterness, to sustain his claim. Popery has been the one 
perpetual heresy, the ruinous and anti-Christian destructive 
heresy, which has blocked the way of Christ's kingdom 
over all the world. It began early, and, we suppose, will 
last more or less to the end. Infallible popes, small and 
great, full of conceit and self-will and spiritual pride, will 
stand up in their insane mulishness, and, in the name of God, 
do the devil's work to the end. 

No amount of Protestantism is any protection against 
popery. In fact, as we have said, the most ultra-Protestant 
may exist in the most denunciatory and anathematizing 
pope. Some years ago a gentleman left the ministry of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, and joined the Presbyterians. 
He took the step because the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
according to his notions, taught dangerous errors,—" baptis- 
mal regeneration," and so on. Measured by the standard 
of his opinions, the Church was a delusion and a snare. So 
he left her. 

Two years after he wrote a letter to the authorities of 
the Presbyterian body, in whose ministry he had been labor- 
ing, and withdrew from that. The Presbyterians also are in 
a bad way. Measured by his infallible measure — his own 
notions — the Presbyterian denomination is altogether false 
to the truth of God. He takes occasion, in the same letter, 
to state that there is none good among all existing sects. 
" Protestant Churches, no less than Rome itself, cannot 
endure the sound preaching of God's Word." That is our 
modest friend's notion. What will become of him .^ Rome 
is out of the question. So large and enthusiastic a pope as 



Popes — Small and Great, J I 

he can never submit to another pope. And, indeed, his main 
complaint against Protestantism seems to be that it has not 
protested enough. AVhat can be done for him? 

We see nothing for it, except that he make a Church of 
his own, which shall be a true Church, with a true faith, 
because it has been manufactured according to his infallible 
directions, and holds his infallible decisions. There is 
clearly no other solution possible w^hen a gentleman takes 
the ground that all the world is wrong, and that he, and he 
only, is the secret counsellor of Divine wisdom. There is 
but one drawback. It may not be possible to find any large 
number of people anxious to accept membership on these 
conditions. But this may be got along with in a way familiar 
in the history of very small popes. The pope may just make 
a Church of himself, and have done w^ith it. 

Men have a right to hold their opinions, be they " evan- 
gelical " or "ritualistic." They have a right to consider 
them important, to press them upon other people, to advocate 
them and defend them by all proper means. They can do 
this without falling into Popery. But vdienever they claim 
that those opinions are essential — are of the faith — are to be 
held by all men on risk of their salvation ; whenever they 
claim for their private interpretations and notions, good or 
bad, the infallibility of Divine truth, they have fallen into 
popejy, which is but another name for schism and self-con- 
ceit and spiritual pride. 



INDIVIDUALISM. 

IT is the tendency^ of our modern civilization to dis- 
integrate. " Every man for himself " is the motto. 
Strange enough that the extreme of high civilization should 
touch the other extreme of barbarism. The savage stands 
by himself against the world, or, at most, stands among his 
own small tribe or clan, the enemy of all mankind. And 
we, civilized men, in Europe and America, in the nineteenth 
century, are proposing the same position for ourselves as 
the culmination of all our endeavors. 

The individual is everything with us, the State nothing. 
The State exists, we say, for the sake of the individual, not 
the individual for the sake of the State. To let a man 
alone, to interfere as little as may be with his devices, to 
give him a fair field and let him make or mar himself, is 
the duty of the State. It has lost all its old patriarchal 
character. There is no king any more who is the father of 
his people, and no king ever can be such, we say, among 
civilized men again. The State casts off all care for the 
people's religion, all concern for their culture or their well- 
being. It is each man's business to think for himself and 
care for himself, and succeed as he may, or fail. If he 
transgress the police regulations of the land, and interfere 
with another's purse and person unwarrantably, the State 
will interpose and punish. It has become a police arrange- 
ment for the preservation of good order — that, and nothing 
more — and does not succeed in that any too well. 

The ^'philosophers," as, with bitter irony, we call them, 
accept the situation, and find it one of the laws of what 



Individualism. 73 

they call "nature," that there must be, and will be, just so 
many unfortunates, so many suicides, so many robberies, so 
many murders, so many cases of starvation, of despair and 
ruin, every year. " Natural selection," they tell us, works 
implacably. The strong live because they are strong. The 
weakest goes to the wall because he is the weakest. 
"Nature" must take her course, and the modern "philos- 
opher " adds up his terrible " averages " as coolly as one 
might any other row of figures in the book. 

The grim old rule is back upon us, and life is a fight. 
It was never more fiercely fought, man against man, than it 
is now in the centres of our wealth and v/isdom. It is 
accepted as the normal condition, this wild mob struggle. 
Humanity is no longer ranked and ordered as a host of 
brethren armed against a common enemy, but each fights, 
as pirates or cut-throats fight, for his own hand. God help 
the weaker races, or the weaker men, for there is no pity for 
them in any influence of our civilization. The weak, the 
incapable, the helpless, the tender, who cannot struggle and 
endure, who cannot meet force with force, and skill with 
skill, and cunning with cunning, there is no place for them 
but in the trampled mass of the defeated, and the cry on 
this field is Vae vidis I 

We have come to w^orship force with a sincerity that 
ought to delight the heart of Mr. Carlyle. The winning 
man is the wise man and the good. The successful man is 
the virtuous man. The conquering rich is the right side. 
We are intolerant of weakness, and detest failure. We 
consider them both bores, and complaints a nuisance. We 
throw up our caps to the conqueror, though his triumph be 
over the wrecked fortunes and lives of better men. 

Our idea of government is, that it is to stand by and see 
fair play, — that is all. Life is a " free fight," and the State is 
an arrangement to facilitate its freedom. Each man is to 
hold his own, ovv'ing duties only to himself; and the fierce 
greed and v/rath and bitterness of the struggle we accept as 
4 



74 Copy. 

the best arena for training a man in the qualities we have 
agreed to admire. The whole tone of our political and busi- 
ness axioms, the whole tone of our philosophy, a good deal 
of the teaching that calls itself Christian, are toward disin- 
tegration and individualism. The army is nothing, the 
individual is everything. The community is an abstraction, 
the one member is what the community exists for. 

And there is a truth in all this. In its wildest and most 
fiercely raven selfishness there is a root of truth in the 
individualism of modern civilization. We have recovered a 
forgotten side of human nature, and a forgotten fact of 
human life. We may learn to deal wisely v\^ith our new- 
found discovery hereafter, but at present it works in hard 
and bitter ways. When the only relations between man 
and man are relations that can be settled by a check upon 
the bank, when we are trying to accept such relations and 
live upon them, as the final outcome of all time, it cannot 
fail to go hard with vast masses of men. When there is 
nothing in business, in the bare ideas of government, in the 
tone of social life, to teach a man that he owes anything to 
any mortal except himself, and perhaps his owm immediate 
family, which cannot be paid in legal tender, and that hav- 
ing paid it so, his life, fortune, and tastes are his own to do 
what he will with, it is not hard to see that it must go 
roughly with any but the strong. 

Yet is it not true that the development of the individual 
is the end of all wise order } Is not the single soul and life 
the living unit to which we come at last, and its freedom 
and well-being the purpose alone worthy } But why does 
this purpose require savagery and the curse of Ishmael for 
its realization } Shall it be left to the hard and cold 
theories of the modern sophists and wordmongers, who 
would persuade us that there is no mercy and pity possible 
in this world, and that we are to accept the law that the 
healthy, the strong, the successful are so at a fixed propor- 
tion of ruin to the weak and the failing 1 



Individualism. 75 

The problem before Christianity in this century, as it 
never has been brought before it perhaps in any other, is to 
reconcile the freedom of the individual with the organic 
unity and prosperity of the whole. Religion remains as the 
one only organizing power among civilized men. What- 
ever tempers or restrains or renders tolerable our savage 
individualism, whatever sends an influence of brotherliness 
or pity or consideration into the thick of the melee, comes 
from the latent influences of Christianity working against all 
opposing influences in the hearts of men. We may as well 
understand it ; there is nothing in the time to help this. 
The time and its tendencies are all against it. The time 
and its tendencies and its bodies, apart from Christianity, 
drive straight on to isolated Bedouinism. The politician 
who tells us the business of the Modern State is to let men 
alone, and govern them as little as possible, seconds and 
repeats what the '^ savans " are eagerly preaching, — that men 
sprung from " germinals " and ''monads " first, and coming 
gradually up through sponges, oysters, and monkeys, in the 
lapse of millions of years into rational men, owe each other 
nothing, and can owe each other nothing, inasmuch as they 
have reached the point of present attainment only on the 
law of each fighting tooth and nail for his own existence, 
and this law of improvement to such heights, must be the 
law of improvement to the end. 

The ''philosophers," as they are called, have swept away 
the ground of human brotherhood relentlessly, and have 
given a philosophic basis to savagery, and made the brute 
fight of life a law of nature. There is no help or hope in 
them. They have made heaven brass, and the earth iron, 
and a bloody battle-field for mere existence, out of the whole 
universe. The statesmen and the "philosophers" both are 
asking mankind to accept the hyena rule as the law of 
humanity. They are both held in check, and their princi- 
ples kept from .their logical end, only by the latent force 
of the Gospel among civilized people. We have all been 



76 Copy. 

taught, in spite of them, that " God hath made of one blood " 
all mankind, and that old teaching is rooted into men's hearts, 
and asserts its living power against all that would contradict 
it. It is strong enough yet to soften the fierceness and the 
selfish greed of modern life, — vital enough yet to give human 
pity and sympathy to the fallen. They are coming at it ; 
they are measuring skulls and leg-bones to find a reason for 
denying it, " on the principles of comparative anatomy ; " 
they are busy over " stone ages," and " iron ages," and " cave 
dwellings," to find pompously-sounding arguments against 
it, and yet it is the one sole principle and conviction which 
binds men together into a life which is endurable. 

All things, we say, are against it. Christianity has to 
fight the battle over again for a personal Father in heaven 
and a personal brotherhood among men on earth. And, 
alas ! it comes to the battle itself divided. The Church of 
God, which was to be the bond of humanity when other 
bonds burst like threads in the fire, is no longer herself a 
bond unbroken. But just because she is not, and because 
the days are what they are, it comes home to every Chris- 
tian man who knows his time and sees its questions, to work 
with redoubled energy and earnestness for the recovery of 
the one brotherhood that alone can stand. For it is the 
very need and hunger of the times that is driving men to 
ask after the lost bond as they have not asked for centuries 
before. In strange, unreasonable, and fruitless w^ays, often, 
they search for something lost out of life, and threatening 
to be lost forever. They are seeking it sincerely if mis- 
takenly. Instinctively the case, as it is, is coming home to 
us all. We see the threatening tendency, and none more 
clearly than we here in our own land, the foremost, for good 
or ill, to accept the mob fight for a finality. We see no way 
to meet it except the Lord's way, — the kingdom of heaven 
on earth, the old good news of human brotherhood. We 
see how, in its weakness, it does meet it now, and w^e can 
guess how it would meet it in its power. 



Individualism. *]"] 

The Church of God is the one hope for the poor, the 
weak, and the failing. The Lord sent her for that, eighteen 
hundred years ago, and it comes to her to be that in this 
century, with a purpose and meaning as intense as in the 
first. 

Will she turn to that purpose '^ In a civilization that 
loathes failure, that has no place for poverty, that turns 
strong eyes upon the conquered, whose chosen prophets cry, 
"Away with weakness, let the strong only live," will the 
Church of God be true to her own high purposes, and take 
her stand beside the vanquished on the old broad ground 
that humanity is one, that when one member suffers all the 
members suffer with it, that life is not a hyena fight for offal, 
but a grand battle of brothers, knights, and gentlemen, 
where the strong help the w^eak, where the brave support 
the feeble, where each is banded to help each, in the world- 
old wrestle with the devil. 

To solve the problem of individual freedom and cor- 
porate responsibility ; to teach men that no man liveth to 
himself and no man dieth to himself, on earth ; to fling back 
the atheistic lie, as false to humanity as it is to God, that 
men are not brethren and each his brother's keeper ; to face 
the Cainite spirit of the time, and its evil prophets, in the 
power of divine mercy and pity, is the work before the 
Church. 

She is called to_ preach. But never in her long history 
was she so called to act, to show forth, in works of mercy 
and love to all the poor and weak and sufi'ering and sor- 
rowing, that she is the household of God, the kingdont 
whose law is unity and love. 



VICARIOUS SUFFERING IN LIFE. 

WE are not going to attempt here to define the doc- 
trine of the atonement, nor are we trying to defend 
it theologically. But we have heard and read the ordinary 
stock objections to the doctrine, or to some misunderstand- 
ing of the doctrine, and desire to call attention to s me 
common analogies of life to which the same objections may 
just as well apply. 

The doctrine of the atonement is the doctrine of vicari« 
ous suffering; that one who is innocent may suffer, and so 
deliver one who is guilty. The objection to it is, that this 
is unfair and unjust; that if a judge should punish the inno- 
cent instead of the guilty, he would be a wicked judge ; that 
even if the innocent were willing, it would be a cruel and 
wicked act, and that it cannot be a righteous act in God to 
inflict on Christ the penalty due to men. 

Let us look at the objection, admitting fully its Vv^eight at 
first sight. It proceeds upon a misstatement to begin with, 
— on the separation of the Father and Son. If the Father 
were indeed one being, and the Son another, then we con- 
fess there is ground for the objection that it would have 
been cruel and unjust for the one Being to demand of the 
other Being that He should bear an arbitrary punishment to 
release a third party who was guilty. So it comes to pass 
that any denial of the essential Godhead of Christ involves 
a necessary denial of His atonement. But the Father and 
Son are one, and not two. Christ is God himself. It is not 
another Being on whom God inflicts punishment for the sins 
of men. He is God himself, bearing of His own will the 



Vicarious Suffering in Life. 79 

sins of His children. There is no force about it ; no arbi- 
trary law is bearing down upon Him. He is man's Master 
and Lord, and He suffers for His creatures. The ordinary 
flippant statement of the doctrine on which the objection is 
founded is entire misrepresentation. 

But what man, who looks at life with any clearness of 
vision, or any depth of thought, will dare to say he is startled 
at the doctrine which teaches that the innocent suffer for 
the guilty ? The whole world is full of illustrations. Life, 
in one aspect, is a vicarious suffering for others all through. 
When the father punishes the child, the child's deepest, 
sorest pain, if he have any right feeling, is that the father 
suffers more than himself. His keenest sense of the guilt 
of his transgression comes from this, — that father and mother 
suffer more intensely than does he ; that his wrong-doing 
has brought bitter shame and sore sorrow on them, guiltless 
though they are in word or thought. 

There is not a well-ordered Christian household in all 
the land where the doctrine of vicarious suffering does not 
receive habitual illustration ; not one where it is not brought 
home to a child, if he is trained as he should be, that in the 
divine ordering of life it comes to pass that the innocent 
suffer for the guilty, and that atonement for wrong is made, 
again and again, by those who did no wrong. 

When the son goes to ruin, when breaking through old 
home teaching and example, and all the guards and fences 
that were built to hedge him in from wrong, he insists on 
going his own mad road to the pit, who suffers ? Does it 
begin and end with himself.'^ If we seek the real sufferers in 
such cases, shall we not find them sitting broken-hearted, far 
away, it may be, shamed and desolate, the gray-headed father, 
the bowed form of the tender mother, sitting by a hearth 
from which the home-light is gone forever ; two gray heads 
going down into the grave together under waves of sorrow ? 

AVhen the light of the home goes wrong — the gently- 
nurtured daughter of the house, around whose golden head 



'8o Copy. 

its glory and its love were gathered in a halo ; she whose 
footsteps made music in all the rooms, beating marches of 
joy in every heart in the happy home which was but a cas- 
ket to enshrine the jewels of her beauty, innocence, and grace 
— when she goes wrong, is she the only sufferer ? Alas ! for 
the home where her step shall echo nevermore. Alas ! for the 
dishonored father, whose face is shamed, whose honored 
name is stained, whose gray head bends in a sorrow no man 
can measure. Alas ! for the mother who loved her, and 
whose heart she has broken ; for the fair sisters, innocent as 
the morning, whom she has disgraced ; for the proud 
brothers who can never hold their heads up among their 
equals any more. 

In such tragedies as these, who suffers.^ Surely, not the 
guilty only, and perhaps in no evident degree at all. Nay, 
the sufferers are the guiltless. The suffering is vicarious 
suffering mostly. 

When the father goes to destruction by some wretched 
appetite that he yielded to till it enslaved him ; when he 
becomes a drunkard, a gambler, or a debauchee ; when he 
yields to the lust of lucre, and commits some crime to grat- 
ify it which compels him to flight or shuts him in a felon's 
cell, who is the sufferer } He } Alas ! Is it not the faithful 
v/ife who would have died for him ? Is it not the woman 
v/hose trust and love he has abused, the one true heart out of 
all the world that clung to him and believed in him and 
fought the devil for him daily 1 Is it not the children who 
v/ill walk for years under the shadow of their father's dis- 
grace, the name he gave them itself a badge of guilt, and the 
carrying it a punishment } 

Here, again, is the common fact, vicarious suffering, — the 
innocent punished, and often tenfold more bitterly than the 
guilty. 

They are over all the earth, these sufferers, — the broken- 
hearted, the shamed, the tortured, outraged sufferers who 
endure the penalties of others' wrongs. The guilty half the 



Vicarious Suffering in Life. Si 

time escape. The guilty never know, often, the depth of 
their guilt. They were and are blind, ignorant, besotted in 
conscience, perhaps. But those others stand beneath the 
storm. On their heads breaks the tempest of the agony. 
The lightning of heaven's outraged law scathes and burns 
them, the guiltless, who are punished for others' guilt. 

In the bitterness of the pain, let such rejoice in this, that 
they are counted worthy to walk with the dear Christ in His 
loneliness ; that they are brought near Him and made like 
unto Him in this awful mystery of life, — innocence suffering 
for guilt. 

It is not in such tragedies as these alone that the princi- 
ple holds. A thousand times a man voluntarily steps forward 
and bears the penalty of another's wrong or folly, feeling 
it all tenfold more bitterly than the doer, and makes atone- 
ment, and sets the guilty free. How often does the weak 
and helpless and guilty run to the strong, the self-reliant, 
and the true, begging for help and deliverance, and how 
often they are given. The most beautiful and heavenly, as 
they are the most manly sights on earth, are those where 
wisdom stands out to take the blow that folly, cowering 
behind, has brought to the stroke ; where strength raises 
its dauntless face to shield weakness, and invites on its own 
grand front the assault that would annihilate what it pro- 
tects; where bold, self-reliant innocence throws its shield 
before broken-down, penitent guilt, and with divine pity and 
divine strength receives or wards off utter ruin. 

Vicarious suffering is a law of life. He has lived very 
narrowly, and thought very shallowly, who has not yet found 
that out. Being what we are, and God's children as we are, 
and bound together by the strong links of that eternal 
brotherhood, it is the law under which we live. Some of us 
go staggering on all our lives, bearing the penalties of 
others' wrongs, whether we will or no. Some few of us vol- 
untarily take such wrongs upon ourselves, and make it the 
burden of our lives to shield from poverty wrong-doers 



82 Copy. 

whom we love. Some, fewer still, fast approaching the im- 
age of the pitiful and almighty Christ — great, strong, tender 
souls — take it on them to bear the world's pains so far as they 
may, make their souls a sacrifice for others, and bend, as 
Christ bent on the ascent to Calvary, under the sins and 
follies and madnesses of men whom they would save. They 
are all along the track of time, these last, from S. Paul and 
his like down ; the men who carried the world's sins all 
their days before God. We see them, and name them, and 
thank Him who sent them. We see the great, mournful, 
pitiful eyes, under the stern brows, the vast, tender hearts, 
the strong, victorious souls, the dauntless faces of the men 
who planted themselves between wrong and its punishment, 
in the breach between the guilty and the outraged law, and 
asked God to spare and save, and gave their lives that the 
prayer might be answered. And reverently we may say it, 
under Christ, their prayer was answered, and they did save 
it. _ To them we owe it, under God, to-day, that it is a habit- 
able world, in which decent creatures can live. Just in 
proportion as they exist does it become more so. Without 
these heroic souls, who make the burdens of their kind their 
own — who have so outgrown, by God's high grace, the nar- 
rowness of selfish care and selfish fear, that they welcome 
under the shadow of their strong hands every sufferer, every 
weakling, every sinner, and try to bear for him what is 
crushing him to the nether depths — without these the world 
would be a world forgotten of its Maker. They are fellow- 
laborers with Christ, and have read the divine secret of His 
coming, and in that the riddle of the universe. 

God's laws are universal. Vicarious suffering is not 
merely the rule for time : it is the rule for eternity. The 
Lamb was "slain from the foundation of the world," as 
really as on that Friday on Calvary. Sorrow, pain, bitterest 
agony borne for others, borne that others might not bear 
them, is the awful law of earth, because, mystery though 
it be, it is the awful law of heaven, where the Lamb slain 



Vicarious Suffering in Life. 83 

from the world's foundation, is offered up for evermore, 
where the Spirit pleads with '' unutterable groanings " in the 
long day that has no night. It is because we are made in 
the likeness of God, because, being so, our earthly relations 
are shadows of those that are eternal in the nature of God, 
that vicarious suffering is the law of our earthly existence. 

As we have said, w^e are not stating or defending the doc- 
trine. We are only suggesting some plain facts, patent to 
the eyes of all thinking men, w^hich, as analogies, may help 
us to understand it, which certainly should prevent us from 
being startled at the idea that one may suffer for another, 
that even the innocent may suffer for the guilty, and suffer 
voluntarily ; which may also suggest there is a vastly deeper 
philosophy underlying the doctrine and the fact, than they 
imagine w^ho think it settles the matter to say, " What would 
you think of the judge who should sentence an innocent 
man to be hung instead of the murderer.^" And would it 
alter the case if the innocent were willing ? 

Our God is not a judge elected to administer the laws 
of Illinois or New York. He is a father; He is a deliverer; 
He is a saviour. He is the source of life and love and pity. 
He is himself the law. His own nature is the law of the 
universe, the law for Himself, and the law for us. 

There are depths in Him, depths in it, and depths in us, 
which the maxims of the circuit court do not measure. We 
have some glimpse of them in the mysteries of our own 
earthly life, a glimpse, at least enough to make us stand awe- 
stricken under the awful shadow of this great law which lies 
across our own lives in its beauty and its terror, and through 
which God speaks to us of the mystery of eternity ; this law 
that thunders or that sleeps by every hearth and in every 
home, — the law of vicarious suffering ; the law that the guilty 
sin, and the guiltless bear the penalty. 



SPONSORSHIP. 

THE other day we noticed an article in a religious jour- 
nal attacking the Church for her use of sponsors in 
holy baptism. The writer claimed that it was unscriptural, 
a corruption, and triumphantly laid down the proposition, — 
"Sponsors are nowhere mentioned in Scripture." 

We were not at all surprised to see the attack. The 
breadth of view on which sponsorship is founded — the deep 
Scriptural basis on which it rests — can hardly be appre- 
ciated by one w^ho argues instead of trying to comprehend. 
The spirit which condemns and annihilates, at one sitting, a 
practice universal and primitive in the whole Christian 
Church, because the word ^' sponsor " is not in the Scrip- 
tures, is a spirit that is quite unable to appreciate the thor- 
oughly Christian and Scriptural and beautiful nature of 
sponsorship. " Bear ye one another's burdens ; and so ful- 
fil the law of Christ," is the sufficient Scripture on which 
sponsorship stands. The relation is based on ihe very cen- 
tral principle of Christianity, — love and help for others. 

Parents bring their children to baptism. They make 
pledges and promises for them there. The Church, in 
Christ's name, demands and receives those pledges. But 
the parents can add nothing to their natural responsibilities. 
Their natural relation binds them already to all they prom- 
ise. The promise is no voluntary assumption of duty on 
their part. The duty is there, pledge or no pledge. To 
bring up their children Christians is the obligation of the 
parental relation, in God's divine organization of the family. 

Therefore the Church, though admitting parents as 



Sponsorship. 85 

sponsors, prefers rather to have others, who can be sponsors 
in deed. She recognizes the fact that the father and mother 
are bound already, and seeks an additional security and 
help for the child which she takes into her arms, by laying 
others under an obligation toward it, voluntarily assumed. 

These others, assuming a quasi-parental relation toward 
the child — godfathers and godmothers — are an added se- 
curity, and a double guard about the young Christian. They 
recognize the organic law of Christianity, and '' bear one 
another's burdens," that they may fulfil it. For neighbors 
and friends and Christian brethren they pledge themselves 
to care for the highest interests of their children. A 
brother's child shall be their child also, to watch over, to 
instruct, to pray for. If father and mother live, and are 
blessed, the sponsors' duty may, indeed, be light. The 
natural parents do all that needs be done. In such case 
there is only a deeper interest in a child or youth, because 
"he is my godson," or "she is my goddaughter." But if 
natural parents fail, if natural parents die, or if they forget 
their duty, then the godfather and godmother are to stand — 
and have the right to stand — in a Christian parent's place ; 
to instruct, help, warn, and console. 

When we look at this most beautiful and most Scriptural 
relation, how admirable is it to secure the very end and aim 
of making a Christian community one family. Suppose it 
carried out generally. Each young person in the community 
is bound, in the most sacred covenant, to some neighbors 
or friends, by a relation strictly and solely Christian. A's 
children are bound to B and C, and B's children to A and 
C, and C's to A and B again. The v^^iole community is tied 
together by these bonds of mutual love and help, A 
sacredly pledges himself to help B bring up his children 
"soberly, righteously, and godly." He acquires a near and 
delicate and loving interest in his neighbor's children. He 
watches them grow up as children, as youth, as young men 
and Vv'omen. They are, in some sort, his. They are his 



86 Copy. 

godchildren. B pledges himself in the same way for A's 
children. The two families are so bound together at the 
font in loving help and counsel, in their most sacred inter- 
ests. " They bear one another's burdens," — the most sol- 
emn and most awful burdens of life. Surely they " fulfil 
the law of Christ." Surely they might well wonder that any 
one, calling himself Christian, but forgetting the spirit in 
slavery to the letter, should cavil with the tie that binds 
them, or the relationship in which they stand, and call their 
loving, mutual help " unscriptural," because he cannot find 
the word '^ sponsor " in his Testament. 

Sponsorship is the very crystallizing of that spirit of 
Christianity which makes men " all one in Christ Jesus." It 
seeks to bind the smaller families into the one great family. 
It would make all grown-up people responsible for the salva- 
tion of all young people. It would lay the solemn duty of 
watching over the young on every grown man and woman in 
the neighborhood or community. Even childless men and 
women it would embrace in its relation, and give to the deso- 
late the love of little children. The wisdom of the Church 
Catholic, grasping the very essence of Scripture, and glow- 
ing with its spirit, established sponsorship as a Christian 
protest against selfishness and narrowness, — as a relation 
which Christianity alone could have devised, so wise, so far- 
seeing, so loving. 

This is, indeed, the ideal of the relation. But, alas ! the 
unfaithfulness of Christians leaves it too often a mere ideal. 
Sponsors assume responsibilities carelessly. They forget 
them when assumed. They leave their children in the 
Lord uncared for. So they shame the wisdom of the Chris- 
tian past, and disgrace the Church of Christ. But, worse 
still, they profane a sacrament, and lie unto God. 

The pledges of a sponsor are voluntary. One may take 
them or leave them. They are solemn pledges. They 
should be taken solemnly and with a clear conscience. And 
** Pay thy vows " should be written on the heart and memory 



Sponsorship ?>y 

of every man and woman who has carried a child to the 
font, and is pledged before God and His Church to see 
Christ's little one brought up for Christ. 

We have not written to defend sponsorship. We have 
rather written to explain its use. But, after all, its living 
use is its quite sufficient defence. Grasping the very 
essence of the Master's teaching, the Church Catholic has, 
from the first, made this loving provision for the little ones. 
Let us carry it out in His Spirit, and make it real, as " our 
mother " means it. 



A HEATHEN VISITOR. 

NO man would dispute the statement that men, con- 
sidered singly, owe duties to other men. Neither 
would there be serious denial of the further statement that 
these duties cannot be left undone without penalty. God 
has so bound humanity in bundles, that, as a matter of fact, 
if one member suffer, that suffering, in some shape, will 
extend itself to all. 

The most striking illustration of the universal law occurs 
in the matter of sanitary police in our cities. The working 
man lives in some close, narrow street, ill-drained, filthy, and 
neglected. His water supply is bad, his means of personal 
and domestic cleanliness small. The exigencies of trade 
and business forbid him the breathing ground of a square, 
or a bit of grass, near his dwelling. Every foot is built 
densely, and densely occupied. The rich citizen, living on 
the ^' broad avenue," or with his roomy and airy mansion 
fronting the thick-foliaged " square," with the means, too, of 
sending his family " in the heated term " to enjoy the cool 
breezes of lake, mountain, sea-shore, or forest, gives small 
heed to his laboring fellow townsman's dirty ward or over- 
crowded tenement-house. When business calls him, as it 
may at times, to pass through the crowded quarter where 
the poor man lives, he wonders how these people can exist 
at all where gutters are so filthy, water so impure, and air so 
foul. And when the heated summer months increase the 
city's sickness, and his morning paper records an increasing 
death list, he comforts himself with the appended statement 
that " the increase is in the lower wards entirely," " the 



A Heathen Visitor. 89 

better portion of the city is healthy as usual," and sips his 
coffee thus assured. And ordinarily the matter stands so. 
The neglected, ill-drained, ill-watered, crowded ward, where 
the green gutters are slimy in the July sun ; where the air is 
foul in the hot evenings in the crowded streets where the 
little children play, and fouler still in the crowded rooms 
where they sleep; the neglected ward ordinarily keeps its 
story to itself, buries its hecatombs of infants dead with 
cholera infantimi^ and, in its dumb sorrow, makes no sign. 

Year in and out it goes on so. July, August, and steam- 
ing September shine and burn on foul alleys and slimy 
puddles, and the " Slaughter of the Innocents " is repeated, 
over and over again, in Christian cities ; and the rich man — • 
in his spacious and airy breakfast-room, with his own bright 
little people full of health and life around his ordered table 
— reads the long sum of these innocent victims of neglect, 
stupidity, and selfishness, with scarce a thought ; for does not 
the medical officer of the board of health assure him, at 
the foot of his report, that " the increase of mortality is due 
to the usual causes prevalent at this season, and is among 
the children of people living in the lower and more 
neglected portions of the city.^ " 

One year, however, there comes a change. The family 
physician cannot enlighten him much on the reason. But 
"the increase of mortality" is not "in the lower wards' 
alone. It penetrates the upper. In the houses on each 
side of him — " fronting the square," large and elegant, with 
all the modern improvements — there have been very sudden 
and startling deaths. One day Charley, or little Bell, is not 
"just right." The father comes home to find the darling 
worse. There is, in a few hours, another grave in the elegant 
lot in the rural cemetery, — a small one this time ; perhaps 
more than one before many weeks are over. For the law 
has at last asserted itself. One member suffers. The 
others will be sure to suffer with it, soon or late. There is 
no escape. The lower wards are beginning to avenge them- 



90 Copy. 

selves on the upper. Tenement-house is proving its kinship 
to palatial residence. The alley has shaken hands in 
brotherhood with the squares, and the rich man's child dies 
with the disease engendered in the tenant-house, where, 
perhaps, he gives disease a home free, in his anxiety to get 
the last dollar of profit out of his brother. Cholera, typhus, 
or scarlatina has come to prove the brotherhood of man, 
whether in tenement-house or in elegant residence, and the 
world-old fact, that the child of the " merchant prince " and 
the child of the day-laborer in his warehouse are the same 
flesh and blood, is proved, to those who had forgotten it, by 
their both dying from the same disease, engendered by the 
same poison. 

On the whole, people in " elegant residences " are getting 
it through their heads, these days, that it does not do to let 
the people in tenement-houses or alleys quite alone. They 
have had some rough lessons of late; and finding that 
cholera, typhus, and such sort of God's messengers do not 
respect palatial residences, have generally made up their 
minds that, in mere self-defence, and from no higher motive 
than pure selfishness, it is wise to leave no neglected wards, 
no foul alleys, no reeking puddles, to invite the first calls of 
those ghastly visitants. But while we have arisen to the 
recognition of the responsibility of individuals in this regard, 
or even of small communities, we are far behind the broad 
Christian standard of the common brotherhood of humanity, 
and the responsibility of nations and races toward other 
races and other nations. 

The cant of progress is a very loud cant. But we shall 
be obliged to progress very far and very fast, notwithstand- 
ing all our "science," before we reach the simple old ground 
laid down by the Saviour of the world eighteen hundred 
years ago. The savans and philosophers are slowly getting 
dim glimpses of certain old truths that lie on the very sur- 
face of their New Testaments. One of those old truths is that 
all men are brethren, of one blood and one family, and are 



A Heathen Visitor. 9^ 

living here under a family law. And as a consequence from 
that truth, that no race and no people can live to itself, or 
die to itself ; that the common bond runs through all, and 
that forgetfulness or denial of that bond is a treason to God 
and man, for which, one day, a penalty will be required. 

Into the hands of the foremost nation, in many respects, 
in Christendom, falls the broad plains of India. The teem- 
ing population are sunk in an idolatry so stupid, immoral, 
and debasing, that Christian men can hardly credit the un- 
doubted truths of its vile story. With this most debasing 
idolatry goes, as must be the case, misgovernment, wretch- 
edness, cruelty, and poverty. Clearly, if Christ's teaching 
be accepted as the law of life, England, as a nation, owes to 
Hindoostan, civilization, Christianity, and good government. 
What we owed, and owe, to the Sioux and Ojibbeways and 
Diggers, what France owes to Algiers, what Russia owes to 
Finland and the Tartars, England owes to the Hindoo. But 
England, like the rest of us, does not pay her debts.' She 
goes to Hindustan in Mammon's, and not Jehovah's, service. 
She governs those many millions for purely selfish purposes, 
denying the brotherhood of nations and the truth of God in 
getting the ultimate farthing out of the Hindoos. And India 
avenges herself on a Christianity which oppresses and de- 
bases her. She remains pagan. She remains so by the fault 
of Christians, — by their fault, or their stupid criminality. 

And now, around the heathen temples of Kali and Durga, 
which English Mammon-service has protected, and in the 
thronging crowds at those great festivals, which so-called 
Christian men only know to make their profit from, arises the 
Avenger. First, among the poor, frantic, half-starved pil- 
grims it finds its victims. Then, as they scatter, in w^ld 
dismay, along the roads and through the jungles, he follows 
the beaten track through the mountains into Persia, across 
to join the Mohammedan caravans to Mecca, then witli their 
returning bands to Alexandria, Smyrna, Constantinople, so 
to Paris and London ; and, at last, when a year or two has 



92 Copy. 

passed, the shadow of the death that was born around the 
temple of a foul Hindoo god, amid licentious orgies and the 
madness of devil-worship, broods over New York and 
Chicago. 

We have given here the history of the origin and march 
of every visitation of cholera that has come to Europe, as 
it has been ascertained by the latest and most thorough 
scientific evidence furnished by the British Medical Staff in 
India, and this is the sum, — Cholera is born, as an epidemic, 
in the great festivals of Hindoo paganism. Thousands of 
pilgrims are collected at some specially " sacred " temple. 
They engage in the beastly orgies of an unspeakably licen- 
tious worship. Body and mind are alike excited to frenzy. 
A hundred thousand often are encamped on the open 
ground around the temple Water and food are alike scarce 
and bad. The pestilence appears. Thousands die. The 
frantic survivors flee, and carry the pestilence far and wide. 
Two years after that Durga festival men are dying by the 
thousand in English and French cities and Belgian villages. 
Three years after, the death-rate in New York is trebled, 
and terrified people are escaping from stricken cities along 
Lakes Erie or Michigan. 

The twelfth year is especially sacred in India. On that 
year all Hindoos turn out to worship Durga, with rites un- 
namable. This twelfth year sends London and New York 
the cholera. So a broken law avenges itself, and Hindustan 
proves itself kin to England and New York by killing men in 
each by its own peculiar death ; slaying people under the 
shadow of Christian churches, with the collapse that was 
born under the walls of Hurdwar and Conjeiveram, in a 
frenzied dance of demons. Because this year the darkness 
is, thank God, far away ; because, so far, health has been the 
abundant blessing of all Christendom, we can speak and 
think more rationally of that awful pestilence that walketh 
in darkness, which heathenism always holds to avenge itself 
for Christian falsehood and unfaithfulness. 



A Heathen Visitor. 93 

The evidence we have mentioned is exceedingly sugges- 
tive. To us it brings out the old-world truth that no man 
can neglect his brother and be safe, and that the remedy for 
many a terrible ill of this world will be found in the old 
original heaven-sent cure, — the preaching the Gospel to 
every creature. Cholera is a pagan disease. No Christian 
man has any business to die of a death-blast from the 
shrines of Kali, the Hindoo devil-god. Christian men do 
die of it, because Christian men have not done their Chris- 
tian duty, and sent Kali to her own place. The doctors are 
proving that the Bible and the Catechism, not calomel or 
laudanum, are the prescriptions that India requires, as a 
sanitary defence for the rest of the world. 



ABOUT MISSIONS. 

THAT scoffing, but very smart paper, " The Saturday 
Review," had an article, lately, reviewing the annual 
report of the London Society for Propagating Christianity 
among the Jews. It took the pains to go over the report 
carefully, summed up all the expenditures, and then counted 
the conversions, and dividing the number of pounds sterling 
by the number of Jews converted, discovered, by a ciphering 
equal to Colenso's, that it costs say four thousand pounds to 
get a genuine Jerusalem Jew converted ; and that the 
ordinary Hounsditch Jew may be converted for about live 
hundred pounds less. We are not just sure of the exact 
figures, but, if our memory serves us rightly (for a friend 
has carried off our " Reviews "), that is about the proportion. 

This, to be sure, is a very rough way of putting the case ; 
perhaps a very scoffing way. But it expresses what is cern 
tainly, in one shape or another, extensively felt by the prac- 
tical men of the day. That is to say, tested by any test by 
which men would measure effort and success in any other 
line of human activity, missions are largely failures. The 
results do not seem to justify the expenditure of means. 
There are great and faithful efforts, and here and there only 
a partial convert. 

Of course, the Christian goes farther, and sees farther, than 
the mere so-called practical man. He has another rule, and 
walks, in this matter, under other guidance. When efforts 
seem fruitless, and toil all wasted, he stands on the Master's 
command, and leaves results with Him. He is content to 
give means, and life itself, if only to save one soul alive. 



About Missions. 95 

He indignantly repudiates the pounds, shillings, and pence 
wisdom in this matter. He will not accept the counting- 
house law of gain and loss, when the enterprise is the con- 
version of a world. 

Nevertheless, although we may comfort ourselves with 
hope and faith for the future, and labor on, content not to 
see the harvest, it is none the less the saddening fact that 
the world does not see it either. It is some ages no\v since 
any kindred or people has been added to the Christen 
family. The small people of the Sandwich Islands may be 
considered an exception indeed, but it is a solitary one, and, 
alas ! theirs is only a death-bed conversion. A few gener- 
ations, at the present rate of decrease, vrill end the native 
race of those beautiful islands. Civilization is withering 
what Christianity would save. 

It was not always so. A fierce, strong, conquering 
paganism was once mastered by Christianity. As the early 
Church brought to her feet a civilized and intellectual 
heathenism in the Roman empire, so the later Church, far 
fallen from primitive simplicity it is true, mastered the savage 
and terrible heathenism of the Celt and the Goth. Nations 
were converted as one man. Races turned Christians in 
the mass. Tens of thousands were baptized in one river. 
And when Christianity took them, it gave them, not decrep- 
itude, but youth, power, and a future. Pagan Ireland was 
swept clear, from end to end, in one man's lifetime. Saxon 
England was made Christian in a couple of generations. 
Boniface saw southern Germany submit to the Cross under 
his own eyes. And, if we turn to the East, less than a 
century sufficed to evangelize ancient Russia. 

And those were days 'when there were no missionary 
societies, no boards, no agencies ; when men waited not for 
" outfits." They were days when Christianity was weak and 
poor ; when, amid overwhelming barbarism and paganism, it 
was wrestling breathlessly for its very existence. Christian 
nations did not then hold the world's wealth and power in 



96 Copy. 

the hollow of their hands. Christian men were not then 
the confessed lords and leaders of the human race. It was 
a poor, weak, blundering, struggling Christianity that made 
a Christian Britain and a Christian Germany. It was a 
Church, bowed to the very dust, that built a Christian 
Russia. There is no comparison between the means now 
and then possessed. It is a rough piece of work indeed 
which a Livingstone undertakes in Central Africa, in oui 
day ; but compare his means with those of Boniface, travers- 
ing the Thuringian forests, barefoot and clad in sheepskins, 
eleven centuries ago. In the one case there is wealth, 
prestige, science, the moral power of a conquering, trium- 
phant civilization; in the other, there was poverty, weakness, 
and ignorance of all things,. save the eternal good tidings. 

And it cannot be said that the work is, in itself, more 
difficult. Christianity has to meet now no heathenism, wise, 
subtile, refined, cultured, like that of Greece ; none hard, 
masterful, lordly, law-creating, civilizing, like that of Rome. 
She meets only coarse, savage, or semi-savage, heathenism 
now. And of that type does she find any less tractable than 
the paganism of Saxon or Dane, of Wendt or Sclavon ? The 
grim heathenism of our forefathers was something of an 
antagonist, compared with the poor, stupid heathenism of 
Asia, Africa, or America. Odin and Thor were champions 
something different from the poor negro's Mumbo Jumbo. 
The first were driven forever from their blue Valhalla by a 
weak, struggling Christendom. Why does a conquering 
Christendom, that owns the world, confess itself baffled by 
the other ? 

Before eight hundred millions of heathen, Christianity 
has stood dumb for centuries. She holds her own barely. 
That is all. She won her victories ages ago. She only 
keeps what the great champions gained. She has ceased 
converting nations, and scoffers take missionary reports, and 
calculate how many thousands it costs to save, here and 
there, a heathen or an unbeliever. What makes this marked 



About Missions. 97 

difference between the present and the past ? Wherein lies 
the weakness of the living Church ? 

Successful or not, the Master's command must be 
obeyed. The Gospel must be preached to " all nations," 
whether they will hear, or will forbear. That is understood 
by every living Church and by every living Christian. The 
preaching must go on, cost what it will, be as apparently 
fruitless as it may. But may vre not ask, w^hy this great 
contrast ? Wherein to-day is the Gospel weaker than it 
was when it converted those savage, stern, and masterful 
forefathers of ours, who built a new world on an old world's 
ruins ? What is the secret of our failure against the in- 
finitely contemptible paganism of to-day ? 

We shall indicate two things which show how far we are 
from the right ground in this matter of missions ; and, con- 
sequently, how far from the ground of success. 

There are possibly in the whole boundaries of the United 
States twenty-five missionaries among the Indians. This 
represents the Christian effort of the United States on /io/zie 
heathenism. How many hundred American missionaries 
are at work in India, in China, in Africa, in Turkey, and the 
far East. W^e do more for China in a year than we have 
done for our own heathen altogether. Our Church is doing 
more for African paganism than all American Christianity 
together is doing for American paganism. Now, we do not 
begrudge the trifle we do for paganism anywhere. We are 
ready to say we ought to do tenfold more. But does not 
this which we have seen appear strange enough to warrant 
inquiry ? Is there not a spirit at the bottom of this strange 
thing which may account for our lack of success ? 

There is such a thing as serving God in wilfulness. A 
man, that is, refuses the work which God, by His providence, 
lays upon him, and insists, in pure self-will, on finding a 
piece of work for himself. A Church may serve God in 
wilfulness as well as a man. A Church may refuse the work, 
the duty, laid at its feet, and insist, in sinful self-pleasing, on 
5 



98 Copy. 

going to the world's end to find a duty for itself. That is 
^Svill worship," and it is never blessed. Now, it is a star- 
tling thing to think that American Christians have had their 
work cut out to their hand, have had American heathen at 
their doors, as their responsibility, and have turned round 
and, in pure savage greed and wolfishness, have trampled 
out the lives of these souls committed to them ; have robbed, 
ruined, murdered them, and then have piously sent a 
hundred " ardent missionaries," and expended thousands of 
money, in converting England's heathen in Hindustan ! 
American heathen died by Christian brutality, and perished 
uncared for ; but Hindoo heathen, or African heathen, Jews, 
Turks, or Nestorians — any but our own — could call out our 
sympathies and command our aid. We say again, we shall 
insist on not being misunderstood, would to God we could 
have a thousand missionaries everywhere where now we 
have but one. Africa, China, the isles of the sea, — they all 
need them. But we only mention this strange spectacle, 
which American Christianity presents, and which, indeed, 
nearly all modern Christianity presents, of a Church turning 
its back on a duty which is its own, and only its own, which 
lies at its very feet, tc take up another duty which is at the 
ends of the earth. We think a great deal of the fruit- 
lessness of modern missionary effort might be explained by 
the fact that it is so often, perhaps from mere thoughtless- 
ness, a will service, a service not of God's ordering, but of 
mere self-pleasing and self-will ; that both the Church and 
the individual missionary, instead of taking up God's work 
which lies at the very hand always, out of mere whim, 
caprice, or wantonness, select a field into which God's 
Providence never called them, and where, in consequence, 
the end will be largely failure. There is not the fragment 
of an Indian tribe on this continent that is not an evidence 
against American Christians that they have left God's work 
undone, and have insisted on choosing their own. 

Another peculiarity about missionary effort now is, that 



About Missions. 99 

we read of "Baptist" missions, and "Roman Catholic" 
missions, of" Lutheran " missions and " Wesleyan " missions. 
In the days when all Christian nations now existing were 
converted, there vrere no such missions. It was not Baptist 
missionaries or Roman Catholic missionaries, Lutheran or 
Wesleyan missionaries, that converted Europe. The men 
that did that were Christian missionaries. It Vv^as Christian 
missionaries alone who did the work which, under God's 
blessing, has been done so far in the w^orld's conversion. 

What we desire to remark is, that, by the very existence 
of a half dozen "missions," we have consigned ourselves to 
failure. A divided Christendom has never evangelized one 
heathen people. Since the first great schism no nevv^ people 
has been added to the Christian commonwealth. The 
division of the East and West ended the new conquests of 
Christianity. It is a very startling historical fact, and w^ell 
worth pondering, but it is founded on a very sure basis. 
The Master himself declares what shall be forever the con- 
vincing proof of His Gospel. We have forgotten it in 
modern times. It is not miracles. It is not Christianity's 
excellence or moral beauty. It is not even its proclamation 
of pardon. It is the unity of Christians, — " That they all 
may be one . . . that the world may believe that Thou hast 
sent Me." Does the missionary, puzzled and bewildered by 
the shrewd Brahman or the cunning Chinese, ever miss the 
Divine proot which is beyond all argument Christ's chosen 
witness to the world } 

We must struggle on indeed, and bear our burdens and 
do our work. The Church must stand by her missions for 
her own sake. They are the very claims she puts forth to 
be a Church at all. But we must be prepared for many 
failures and many discouragements, for the times herein are 
sadly out of joint ; and, above all, w^e must work and pray 
for unity, as that which alone contains that promise of the 
world's conversion, — as that omnipotent argument which 
alone will bend man, over all the earth, to the feet of Christ. 



ARE THE CLERGY NARROW? 

IN speaking of colleges, and their affairs and discipline, 
one of our prominent newspapers takes the ground that 
clergymen are not the men to manage them or govern them, 
for the reason that a clergyman is a "professional moralist," 
*.^ a man part of whose professional duty it is to keep himself 
apart from the world, to live within narrower bounds than 
most of other people, and devote most of his attention to one 
class of considerations, forming only half of those which men 
are called upon to w^eigh every day in solving the problems of 
ordinary life." 

We think any man who considers the matter will come 
to the very opposite conclusion, — that a clergyman is a man 
who lives within the largest bounds of life, who touches the 
most varied interests, and who gives attention to the largest 
class of considerations. 

We are speaking now, be it understood, of the class of 
clergy which furnishes, of necessity, our college officers, — 
the educated and cultured class. They have been trained 
in the same schools and colleges with other educated men 
about them. They have shared in their studies and sports 
until manhood came. They have held their own, and gen- 
erally more than their own in both, in all those growing 
years. And when professional and busy life has come, the 
young merchant has gone to his desk, the young lawyer to 
his office, the young physician to his patients. They have 
become narrowed, dwarfed, and warped, as a rule, by the 
pressing demands of business or profession. That is the 
price paid in America for success in any walk A man must 



Are the Clergy Narrow? IOI 

submit to be dwarfed and distorted. The successful phy- 
sician tends more and more to become a mere physician, to 
narrow himself to what he works in ; the successful lawyer to 
become a mere lawyer, and the successful merchant a mere 
merchant. They are bound, as the price of success, to live 
in narrow circles, and keep thought and interest in profes- 
sional grooves. 

It is simply not so with the class of clergy of whom we 
speak. Their duty calls them to live among the old thoughts 
that trained them still. They extend their studies into 
wider and more varied ranges. History, philosophy, law, 
language, literature, all the activities of human thought and 
their results, belong to theology, and are embraced in it as 
they are in no other science. To the clergyman nothing 
human is foreign, because man is the dimmed image of 
God. To him all human things come directly as professional 
concerns. They touch his pursuits, his life, his professional 
interests, in a thousand ways. He is, of all his compeers, 
the man under least temptation to sink into a mere pro- 
fessional, to dwarf his manhood, or distort it, under the 
pressure of an artificial civilization. 

Take the college class that graduates this summer, in 
twenty years' time, and we dare put it to the test that, other 
things being equal, the clergymen of the class will be the 
largest-thoughted men in all the number ; the men who touch 
life and its interests at most points, the men who have most 
completely kept themselves in contact with the substantial 
thought and movement of the world. And what we have 
the right to look for prima fade we find in practice. 

We must, of course, compare likes with likes. It will 
not do to take some ordinary, dull, good, pious clergyman, 
who has starved in some obscure nook on a pittance, and 
compare him with a brilliant and successful lawyer of the 
metropolitan bar. But make a fair comparison, take leading 
clergymen and leading professionals, or business men of the 
same city and of the same rank, if we may so speak, and 



I02 Copy. 

we venture to say the common verdict is, that the clergyman 
is the man who Hves least in his professional groove, whose 
attention is least " devoted to one class of considerations," 
and who has least sunk the man in the profession. We be- 
lieve it the common experience everywhere that the clergy 
are the men of largest sympathies and most varied culture 
and knowledge among those with whom they live. And we 
are certain that facts in the literary and intellectual move- 
ments of the country show that this is the case. 

As to the question of colleges, with very rare exceptions, 
the colleges of the country owe their existence to the clergy 
of the country. They have done for them tenfold what has 
been done by any other class in the community. They have 
been, until lately, the only class of men who have had the 
wideness of thought and the breadth of interest sufficient to 
see that such institutions are of prime necessity in a civil- 
ized land. They have given their interest and time and 
labor freely to the educational institutions of the country, 
which they have created and fostered to their present im- 
portance ; and it is a queer conclusion to come to at this 
day, that they are unfit to manage the institutions which, but 
for them, would not have existed. They have made them 
all they are ; but now, the men who alone were large-minded 
enough to see the need of colleges are too narrow, it seems, 
to govern young America when he comes to them. 

No better evidence to confute this narrow opinion can be 
cited than the fact that, while other classes of men — now 
that colleges have grown enough to attract their attention — 
are anxious to make them mere specialty shops — institutions 
for the manufacture of a certain number of doctors, lawyers, 
botanists, chemists, or engineers yearly — the clergy are the 
class large-minded enough to protest against this dwarfing, 
distorting, and narrowing process, and to claim that high 
education shall be, as it always has been, liberal, and not 
servile; the education of a man, and not of a mere money- 
maker ; the training of a soul, and not the creation of an- 



Are the Clergy Narrow? 103 

other chemist or another lawyer. The very class of men 
who are condemned as too "narrow," are the class that 
alone protest against this caricature of a liberal training, 
which is advocated by those other large-minded people, and 
which desires, as its perfection, the training of mere special- 
ists, instead of the training of men. 

It is time that this poor old cant about the clergy as 
" living in narrower bounds than other people " were done 
with. They certainly live in no narrower bounds of thought 
or interest or knowledge. They do live in the intellect. If 
they have no experience of fashionable parties, and their 
bounds are so " narrow " that they do not allow them to 
visit the " Black Crook," or the "White Fawn," or what 
other disgraceful exhibition may outrage the nation's de- 
cency, we fancy they do not lose any very important lesson. 

Clergymen live within no "narrower bounds" than all 
decent, educated, and cultured men ought to live within, — 
certainly all men fit to be entrusted with the training of the 
young. And if the day should ever come (which certainly 
never will come) that the educational institutions of the 
country cease to be largely guided by, and to get their tone 
from, the clergy of the country, we are very certain that tone 
will be narrower, vastly, wherein it ought to be broad, and 
broad only where every good man would desire to see it 
narrow. 



RELIGION FOR COOL WEATHER. 

WE have been reading a newspaper article \vhich is 
very suggestive as presenting one phase of our pop- 
ular "common Christianity." The article is entitled, ''The 
Boston Pulpit — Reopening of the Churches Yesterday." It 
goes on to state that the churches which, it seems, " were 
closed during the heated term, were reopened yesterday." 
They "presented an animated and interesting appearance." 
The Boston " Jenkins " says that " a well-dressed congrega- 
tion presents to the eye a very pleasing spectacle ; " and he 
gives us the important information that " a Boston clergy- 
man often gazes upon as gorgeous dresses as are gathered in 
the balconies of the Boston Theatre, v/hen the Italian opera 
is at its zenith," — which must be a very delightful thing for 
the Boston clergyman, and which, no doubt, accounts for the 
eloquence of the Boston pulpit. 

Our Jenkins then goes on with a quantity of that pecu- 
liar philosophy and sentiment for which his race is so famous, 
and tells us of "the return to the familiar altar," althoudi 
we were not aw^are that many churches in Boston contain 
such a thing; and of "the revival of the old inspiring faith," 
which is really quite a new idea, the general opinion being 
that the pet faith of Boston is anything but old. He has 
also something to say of " the pastor fresh from the scenes 
of nature, the sea-side, mountain-top, and v/oodland." After 
entertaining us with Jenkinsian eloquence of this sort, he 
gives us several outlines of sermons from these pastors 
"fresh from the scenes of nature," to their "well-dressed 
and animated conQ:re'^ations." 



Religion for Cool Weather. 105 

The sermons, vve must say, as Jenkins reports them, are 
rather disappointing. Pastors " fresh from the sea-side and 
the mountain-top," gazing on as " gorgeous dresses," also, as 
dehghts the soul of the fiddler and inspires the trombone 
" at the Italian opera in its zenith," ought to do better con- 
siderably than they appear to have done in this instance. They 
are not up to the dignity of the great occasion. They do 
not do justice to " the animated and interesting appearance " 
of the congregation, and the sublime " gorgeousness " of 
their dresses. One wonders how such '' gorgeous dresses '' 
could possibly endure such flat insipidity in the performers. 

One of the pastors is represented as getting off the fol- 
lowing climax in a glorification of "the Hub," — ^' North 
America is the representative of freedom, and that which 
represents it best is New England, and of New England the 
special representative is Massachusetts, and of this Massa- 
chusetts, Boston is the metropolis." 

It will not do to scan too closely this specimen of Bos- 
ton English, but the meaning may be found with care. It 
reminds one of the famous climax of another " Hubbite : " 
"America is the greatest country in the world ; Massachu- 
setts is the smartest State in the Union ; Boston is the 
smartest town in Massachusetts ; my father is the smartest 
man in Boston, and I am my father's smartest son." The 
"pastor fresh from the woodlands," inspired with " gazing on 
gorgeous dresses," ought certainly to have wound up his cli- 
max with, — " and of this Boston, this congregation is the most 
animated and gorgeously-dressed congregation." But we 
leave Jenkins and his "fresh pastors, "whom, for the sake 
of the reputation of the good town of Boston, we trust he 
caricatures, and especially the reverend gentleman who 
preached at the " Melodeon," and whom he represents as 
actually revelling in nonsense, and trampling on the man- 
gled grammar of his mother tongue. 

There is a more important side to this matter. The eye 
of Jenkins is, of course, blind to that. It seems that there 

.s* 



To6 Copy. 

are cool-weather Christians in Boston. Their piety goes 
down as the mercury goes up. It can stand eighty degrees 
Fahrenheit, but above that it must have a vacation. When 
the heated term comes, it fairly surrenders. The world is 
too hot for it. It leaves " the familiar altar." It deserts 
"the old inspiring faith." "Gorgeous dresses" can no 
longer inspire it. It shuts the church in despair, and flies to 
Saratoga, Newport, or Niagara, till the weather cools. The 
pastor follows the sheep. Set apart, as he claims, to preach 
the Gospel to a perishing world, he succumbs to the " heated 
term," and lets the world perish, if it please, while he bathes 
at Newport, or tickles trout in the mountains. Was the Gospel 
only meant for cool weather 1 we ask in our simplicity ; or 
do they stop sinning when the mercury is over eighty.'^ 

A great city, full of want and vice, of sorrow, suffering, 
death, and sin, is deserted by its pastor ; its churches are 
closed ; its Christianity is silent. Its population remains the 
same. Its wants are the same. Its vice is the same. It is 
usually the period of greatest sickness in the city. The 
churches are shut, and the pastors are off to " fresh fields 
and pastures new," enjoying themselves like young bullocks 
released from the yoke. And, then, when the fashionables 
return from Saratoga, or the Falls, and the " gorgeous 
dresses " are fresh from Paris, what eloquent sermons they 
preach on the power of the pulpit, and how the soul of 
Jenkins is rejoiced at the animated performance. 

We suppose that the people of Boston or New York, who 
leave those cities during the hot weather for the watering- 
places, are hardly appreciable in lessening the population. 
They may call themselves " the world," but they are so 
small a world, that no stranger would miss them from Broad- 
way or Washington street. The rush and roar of the great 
city is the same. The tide does not miss the scattered drops. 
And yet these great cities, with not one half the church 
accommodation requisite, close their church doors for a 
month in the year, as if these thousands of souls were of no 



Religion for Cool Weather. 107 

account. It is really a marvellous phase of Christianity. In 
no other country under the sun is it exhibited. 

We have it here because our " common Christianity " 
goes on the purely sect idea. That idea is that the congre- 
gation, the particular voluntary association or society, is all 
for whom " the pastor " is responsible. He is their pastor. 
They hire him, pay him, and give him work and vacation. 
With the huge mass of ignorance and vice and misery out- 
side, not in the society or congregation, he has nothing to do. 
The society is a voluntary society. The pastor's office is a 
voluntary office. The society builds a "church." They 
call it so, — Christ's house, the word means. But it is their 
house. The name is an absurdity. They build it to have 
their pews in, to show their dresses in, to gaze at gorgeous 
bonnets in, to hear their hired pastor preach in. The poor 
are shut out. The ignorant and vicious have no place there. 
The pew-holders own the church. So the congregation cuts 
itself off from all connection with those outside, being a 
voluntary society ; and the pastor, being the pastor of these 
people that hire him and pay him, is cut off also from all 
outside. He is not sent to the world. He is " called " and 
hired for these good people here in the pews. His responsi- 
bility begins and ends with this assembly. If outsiders want 
churches, let them build them. If they want pastors, let 
them call them. It is their own affair. This is a free country. 

There is the theory which closes churches in the heart 
of a great crowded city, when the rich leave it for their 
summer resorts. There is the theory which sends men, call- 
ing themselves "ambassadors of Christ," rambling in the 
summer woods, while the poor have not the Gospel preached 
to them, while the sick are unvisited, the vicious unreclaimed, 
and the mourners uncomforted. There is the theory which is 
daily increasing the heathenism of our great cities. 

So the Baptist shuts his church because the congregation 
that own the church and pay the preacher are mostly out of 
town. It makes no difference that there are thousands in the 



I08 Copy. 

city who are practically heathen. And the Unitarian closes 
his, and has a vacation, and the " eloquent pastor " rolls ten- 
pins at Saratoga, because the society is at the Springs, 
although there are thousands behind too poor to be there, 
as they are too poor to pay for pews in his handsome 
church. And the Congregationalist, whose special discov- 
ery this theory of the voluntary society is, turns the key in 
his door and lets the sinful world get on without the Gospel, 
because the house is his, and he does not want it for awhile ; 
the pastor is his, — he called him, and made him, and he doea 
not care for his eloquent sermons just now, and so turns him 
loose on the White Mountains. 

This theory of church or pastor, we need hardly say, is 
not ours. The Church is, with us, not a voluntary society, 
but a divine body. Its churches are really the Lord's 
houses, and not ours. Pastors are not of earthly appoint- 
ment, but of divine commission. They are sent to the whole 
world. They are responsible for the souls to which they are 
sent. Poor or rich, outside or inside, whether men will hear 
or will forbear, they are, in due degree, responsible for all. 

We cannot close our churches. We cannot suspend our 
services. We cannot desert the wicked world because the 
mercury rises. We cannot take vacations from religion, or 
close the doors on piety for the heated term. If these 
things are done among us, they are like some other strange 
things done by yielding to an evil example from without. 
They are utterly heathenish from our principles. We find 
Jenkins delighting his enraptured heart with gorgeous dresses 
in no church of ours in Boston. We trust the opportunity 
was afforded him by very few, at all events ; that such utter 
blindness to religion and its purposes as this "vacation" 
business of churches and clergymen, was the very marked 
exception among our Boston parishes. It may be said, " Hard- 
working clergymen need, now and then, a rest, and especially 
in summer. It is really a mercy to close the church for a few 
weeks, and let the pastor rest and refresh himself." 



Religion for Cool Weather. 109 

Perhaps, sometimes, he does need rest. We have not a 
word to say against his having a vacation occasionally, 
although, we think, if he were more a pastor and less a mere 
preacher; if he were not forced, as his sole object in life, to 
grind out two heavy sermons a week from a capital of brain 
and learning which are not equal to one in a month usually ; if 
he were not compelled to make bricks without straw, and talk 
when he has nothing to say, and Avash the color out of his 
life, and the strength out of his constitution, in ceaseless 
streams of ''sermonizing;" if his duties were reasonable 
and Christian, we have no doubt he would do admirably 
without the sea-side every summer, as the vast majority of 
his brethren do. But even if his brain has become weak by 
the endless dribble of " fashionable sermons," and his eye 
dim with gazing on " gorgeous dresses," and his whole con- 
stitution shattered by the effort to say something '' smart " 
every Sunday, and he must have rest, wdiy shut the church 1 
Cannot a congregation, that shines so brilliantly at the 
Springs, or glitters so gorgeously at home, cannot they 
afford to procure an assistant for their '' talented pastor " 
when his povv'erful brain grows weak under the frying dog- 
star, and "he babbles o' green fields.^" Certainly, some 
solution should be found for the difficulty, short of closing 
the churches. 

A Christianity that shuts its churches, closes up business, 
and turns its back on the world when the Vv^eather becomes 
uncomfortable, is not a Christianity which will effect much 
in Boston, or anywhere. '' Churches " which are so utterly 
blind to the purposes for which a church exists, that they 
forsake a crowded city and carry their religion and their 
''pastor" out of it in their carpet-sacks when the streets 
become unpleasantly w^arm, are not " churches " which are 
very important in the world to any but our unhappy Jenkins. 

We trust that Boston may get, in time, another style of 
church, and another sort of Christianity. It evidently needs 
both. 



MISMANAGING THE LORD'S BUSINESS. 

THE Church is always in want. Half the worry of 
bishops, conventions, convocations, missionary boards, 
etc., is to raise money. And altogether, and for all pur- 
poses, a good deal is raised. Steadily, too, year by year, the 
amount increases. And yet, with every year, the demand 
increases, and, like Oliver Twist, the Church, in all depart- 
ments of her activity, is asking for more. She will keep 
right on doing so, we have no doubt, indefinitely. She will 
yearly get more, and, with every increase, her demands will 
increase. We do not complain of this. No one ought to. It 
is a good sign. The more we do, the more we see to do. 
We trust the day will come, and come soon, when the gifts 
of Churchmen will bear some due proportion to their bless- 
ings. And when that day does come, the cry for more will 
be, in good degree, satisfied. 

It would seem, however, that since there is so much 
difficulty at present in the getting, there should be double 
wisdom in the using. The misuse or non-use of capital in 
hand already affords no great encouragement to those who 
are asked to make that capital more. The wise business 
man knows that unused accumulations are no better than 
heaps of pebbles. He is not content to let any part of his 
capital lie idle. He seeks to keep it turning over and accu- 
mulating all the time. 

It seems to us, that here is a wisdom which the Church 
has not learned The children of this world are, in their 
generation, in this respect, too, wiser than the children of 
light. The amount of unused, or misused, capital in the 



Mismanaging the Lord's Business. 1 1 1 

Church is enormous. The sums lying comparatively idle, 
locked up out of sight and use, are amazing when one con- 
siders how continuously the cry goes out for money for 
Church purposes. 

The other day we passed a church. It is a rather 
grand building, as our American parish churches go. It 
cost one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, and is 
not yet finished. This church, unfinished, represents, then, 
a capital which would produce twelve thousand five hun- 
dred dollars a year. The total number of services in this 
building was one hundred and twelve during the past year, 
averaging, it would be fair to say, at most, two hours each. 
That is, the building was used, for the purposes of its erec- 
tion, two hundred and twenty-four hours in three hundred 
and sixty-five days. Those hours, reduced to days of 
tvrenty-four hours each, give nine days and one third. The 
cost of house room for a moderate congregation of seven or 
eight hundred people to worship their nine days and the 
fraction was, as we calculated, twelve thousand five hundred 
dollars, or twelve hundred and fifty dollars a day, and 
something to spare. Who will deny that we are so man- 
aging matters that religion is becoming a luxury.^ 

Near this church stands a neat chapel, which cost about 
twelve thousand dollars, representing an income, therefore, 
of twelve hundred. The chapel was used, during the year, 
two hours every Sunday, as a Sunday-school room, — one 
hundred and four hours. It was also used twenty times for 
services, averaging, let us say, one hour and a half each, — 
one hundred and five hours. The chapel, therefore, was in 
use two hundred and nine hours, — about nine days. These 
nine days' use of the chapel cost the parish, as we see, 
twelve hundred dollars, or over one hundred and twenty 
dollars a day. 

It is very curious, when one thinks of it, how that sort of 
thing goes on, and how it is accepted as the correct thing, 
without question. We have brought up a very favorable 



1 1 2 Copy. 

case indeed. There are those, more marked stilL where 
several hundred thousand dollars are invested in building 
and grounds, for the sole return of an occupancy of four 
hours a week. And this will be managed and brought about 
and borne by gentlemen who would consider the same course 
in their private affairs as a prima facie qualification for the 
lunatic asylum. 

Ask any member of a vestry which will build a church 
to cost a quarter of a million, on a lot that is worth a hun- 
dred thousand more, for occupancy one hundred and four 
hours in a year, what he would think of one who would 
invest three hundred thousand in a residence which he pro- 
posed to occupy nine days in the three hundred and sixty-five, 
and he would tell you the man must be a madman or a fab- 
ulous millionaire. And yet this same vestryman, a member 
of a Church, which, as we have said, is always in the high- 
way begging, which never has enough, which pleads and 
implores for more, — this vestryman, we say, will coolly be 
one of a half dozen to do, in Church financiering and in- 
vesting, just this amazing performance. Over all the coun- 
try the Church has enormous and unproductive investments 
of this sort, — hundreds of thousands of dollars locked up 
in stone and mortar, to be used four hours a week, and to 
be utterly useless all the rest. 

We are not blaming people for investing largely in 
church building. We have no fault to find with costly and 
grand churches. Buildings of that sort are always a legiti- 
mate method of investment for Church funds. 

What we want to call attention to, is the fact that we do 
not use them. We build them and lock them up. We keep 
them, as in some neighborhoods, we have heard, they used 
to keep a "best room '*— the largest, airiest, most attractive, 
and best furnished room in the house — shut up and closely 
curtained, into which nobody enters, except on occasion of 
a wedding or a funeral, or when " the minister " comes to 
tea. Our churches are our best rooms. We have no 



Mismanaging the Lord's Business. 1 13 

rooms in our houses now, shut up like hermetically-sealed 
cans, and too good for family use ; but we erect costly 
churches as " best rooms " for the community, and let no- 
body peep in excej)t on state occasions, — and, unfortunately, 
these state occasions are very rare and far apart. 

We have done nothing extraordinary yet in church 
building in America, and it is very evident, from what we 
have here discoursed upon, that we are not likely to do 
much at present. There is a self-imposed limit on absurd- 
ity, and that limit is reached when people build a church, 
costing three hundred thousand dollars, for use four hours 
in a week. They really will not go on and build one cost- 
ing five hundred thousand for that purpose. We think the 
other is the limit that can be depended on. Of course, to 
build one costing a million or two, — a cathedral, — for that 
extent of use, is too glaring an absurdity for even building 
committees, in this great country, to perpetrate in cool 
blood. 

Matters are bad enough as they are, and we never hear 
of the proposed erection of " an elegant and costly church " 
without a sigh, — so much more capital buried. 

For, as we see, we have not learned what to do with our 
elegant and costly churches. We will not be guilty of so 
poor a jest as to suppose that any sane man can dream that 
"an elegant and costly church " is really to stand like an 
empty jail, on the street, all the year round, except those 
four poor hours on a Sunday. A religion that wants a 
church only four hours on Sunday, is a very absurd and 
recklessly extravagant religion, if it wants an elegant and 
costly one. That sort of religion never built elegant or 
costly churches in the past. It never put tvv'o stones 
together in a cathedral. It is a religion that built wooden 
meeting-houses in America, and " little bethels " of red 
brick, for "protracted meetings" and tea drinkings in Eng- 
land. When it takes to building churches, unless that act is 



114 .. Copy. 

a prophecy of better things to come, it is only dilettante 
affectation. Perhaps there is something of the first extant 
among us, but thus far there has been a fearful deal of the 
latter in our attemjTts at Church architecture. 

We are every day making religion more and more 
costly, more and more a luxury, and not a necessity of life. 
It will soon be as far away from ordinary people, for com- 
mon use, as turtle-soup and ortolans from their dinners. 
When it costs religion an investment of from one to five 
hundred thousand dollars capital to house itself for two hun- 
dred and eight hours in a year, it does not need much skill 
in figures to see that to provide it house room — not for nine 
days, but for the whole three hundred and sixty-five — will 
require an amount of outlay which is entirely hopeless of 
attainment. 

We need scarcely make the evident suggestion, that our 
elegant and costly churches might be used to much better 
purpose. It would not hurt them to air them, occasionally, 
on other days than Sundays. Also to make the most use of 
our invested capital, it requires no wonderful wisdom to dis- 
cern that there are twelve hours in a day on Sunday, as on 
all other days — twelve, and not four — and, having digested 
that fact, it might occur to us that a much larger number of 
people — indeed, two or three quite different congregations, 
one or two free — might occupy the same house without 
interfering. Moreover, a neat building which will accom- 
modate our Sunday school for two hours a week might, 
quite as easily, accommodate our parish school six hours a 
day, and be free, tlien, for a night school besides. 

AVe are doing a good deal in the way of those perma- 
nent investments of the Lord's money in stone, or brick and 
mortar ; but thus far, as we have hinted, we have not done 
much to make these investments yield adequate returns. It 
would seem that the time has come to study up this matter 
a little and discover what churches are built for, and for what 



Mismanaging the Lord's Business. I 15 

purpose money is put into their walls and roofs. It strikes 
us, at times, that some of our parishes, which have become 
possessed of elegant and costly churches, are very much 
in !he position of the man wdio drew the elephant in the 
lottery. They have one advantage over him, however. 
The parish can "close the church for the season," and be 
rid of the elephant during the hot weather. 



MASSIVE TOWERS. 

WE read, some time since, an account of the Church of 
the Good Shepherd in Hartford, Connecticut, erected 
by the widow of Colonel Colt as a memorial to her hus- 
band and children. The church is a marvel of beauty. For 
lavish expenditure and costly magnificence it is unapproach- 
able, so far, by any church in this country. It has cost a 
fortune, and no small fortune either. In the sermon at the 
consecration of the church the preacher felt it necessary to 
justify the costly offering of the noble woman whose large 
heart and large wealth have given that beautiful temple as a 
free church forever. 

There is, undoubtedly, in the minds of many good people, 
a feeling that money spent in costly churches, and in erecting 
massive toAvers, buried in stone and mortar walls, or hidden 
in deep foundations, is not well spent. To the struggling 
missionary on the border, or to his struggling people, these 
thoughts are natural enough, when the account of large ex- 
penditures on costly churches is read. A tithe of the sum 
would put them upon a sure basis. Their modest wants 
would be well supplied in the vray of a neat, correct, and even 
beautiful church, by what they read of as spent in a set of 
chancel windows, or on the last twenty feet of a massive 
tower. It looks to them like ostentation, and they are dis- 
posed to ask, " Why this v/aste ? " The matter needs con- 
sidering. 

It is justified, one would suppose, amply enough by 
appeal to the Scriptures. Solomon's temple was an instance 
of the most lavish two-handed expenditure on stone walls. 



Massive Towers. 1 1 7 

The building was a small one after all, — not larger than many 
a parish church. It was never entered by any but the priests. 
The people only saw it from without. Its tcse^ to a practical 
man, might seem very little. The tabernacle, in its day, had 
answered quite as well. And yet the vast expenditure of a 
kingdom's revenues on that marvel of beauty and splendor — 
that pile of glittering marble and burning gold — was ac- 
cepted as a true and wise service at the hands of the nation 
and its kings, and God blessed the givers — blessed them, 
though they knew that He needed no house at their hands 
— though the heavens, and the Heaven of heavens, was His 
dwelling-place, and the " Most High dwells not in temples 
made with hands." 

The principle in the expenditure on the temple is clear, 
— " All things come of Thee, and of Thine own^ O God, have 
we given Thee." When a man gives to God he is to give 
according to the glory of Him to whom he offers. The cost- 
liness of the gift is to be measured only by the ability of the 
giver. 

The same principle appears in the New Testament, and 
is confirmed by the Lord as the abiding law of His king- 
dom. The poor widow cast in more than they all, — because 
they gave of their abundance, while she cast into the treasury 
all that she had. 

The woman, again, who broke the " alabaster box of 
ointment, very precious," and poured it on His head, was 
commended, — ''She hath done what she could." Yet there 
were those who thought it waste, who were very indignant at 
the extravagance, who argued that it might have been put to 
a far better use. It " might have been sold for much, and 
given to the poor." They were ready to blame the woman 
for her lavish and apparently wasteful extravagance. It is 
suggestive that the blame came from Judas Iscariot. The 
transaction certainly justifies lavish expenditure in the Lord's 
honor. In any worldly view it was mere waste, reckless 
waste. Done in the Lord's service, from love toward Him, 



Il8 Copy. 

and regard for His honor, it is justified and commended, and 
made an example for all time. But the expenditure of large 
sums in churches is not only fully justified by the Word of 
God and the commendation of our Saviour, it is also justi- 
fied on the very low ground on which such expenditure is 
blamed. We hold it capable of the clearest proof that grand 
churches, costly churches, magnificent churches, massive 
towers, tall spires, and all the rest, are thoroughly wase, prac- 
tical, and telling investments for the money of Christian men. 

It is not necessary to defend the massive towers on such 
a ground as this. The Christian, moved by true Christian 
feeling, wants only the justification of God's Word and his 
own conscience. He will not give to the Lord that which has 
cost him nothing. He does not measure his offering by its 
money value in income. A house for the worship of God 
build as lavishly as he may, is very unworthy of its uses. He 
knows that. But he will make it as little unworthy as his 
means will allow. He looks to the glory of Him to whom he 
offers, and he will offer the best. 

If a hard, cold, or practical age fails to appreciate such 
reasons and such motives, there are others to justify him 
even on its own low ground. For men are made up of body 
and soul. They are reached through their senses. Many 
people, unfortunately, cannot be reached easily in any other 
way. They have faith in what they see, at all events. They 
believe stone walls are strong. They can appreciate the 
solid arguments of massive towers. Unclothed ideas have 
no power over thousands of our fellows. Faith is no faith 
till they see it embodied. Law is no law till they see it mani- 
fested in force. 

These are the thousands. They need a clothed Chris- 
tianity. They need a religion which takes a visible shape, and 
faces them with symbols of its influence and power among 
men. They look about the great city. They see that wealth 
is powerful. Its palaces meet them on every hand. They 
see that law is powerful. The court-house, the rocky walls 



Massive Towers. II9 

of the prison, the arsenal's gates and towers tell them that. 
Commerce is strong. They see that in the long lines of huge 
warehouses, in the bridges, the docks, the railroads, the marble 
palaces of trade. 

All things that work among men take outward covering 
and show themselves in the architecture of the great city. 
All build their costly temples and lay deep the foundations 
of their massive towers. There are palaces for trade, palaces 
for art, palaces for amusement, palaces for learning, some- 
times, massive towers for railroad companies, costly struct- 
ures for insurance offices, marble fronts for banks and hotels, 
lavish ornamentation on buildings where they sell silks to the 
ladies, and equally lavish expenditures on those where they 
serve oysters to their husbands and brothers. 

Compared with other buildings in our cities, our churches 
are all cheap and modest. Many times they are a disgrace 
and shame among the splendid buildings devoted to a great 
city's business or pleasure. And this has its effect on men 
being what they are. It is true, a man can worship as sin- 
cerely in a barn as in a cathedral. But the men who worship 
sincerely anywhere are not the majority of our population. 
We want to influence those who do not worship in the one 
place or the other ; and a religion which takes a barn for its 
temple, by free choice, while its professors build palaces for 
the sale of dry goods, and marble fronts for their dwelling- 
houses, is not a religion which will strike the non-worshippers 
as possessing much power for good. 

A grand church is a ^dsible manifestation of the power of 
Christianity. It testifies to the strength of an invisible reality. 
It is faith, clothed and speaking to all men's eyes. Built as 
a free gift, by free givers, it proclaims the eternal endurance 
of that Gospel preached in Palestine eighteen hundred years 
ago. It tells men, as nothing else can tell them, that that 
Gospel is alive, a power on earth still in men's hearts and 
hands ; a power to mould and influence and control the 
world's forces in every Christian city. There has not been 



1 20 Copy. 

a church erected in any city in the land that has not preached 
a perpetual sermon more eloquent, more convincing, than 
any preached in its pulpit. And the grander the church, the 
more lavish and costly its adornments, the more eloquently 
does the church building preach. Its towers cannot be too 
massive. Its buttresses cannot be too deeply founded, too 
rocky and solid. Its windows cannot be too glorious in 
crimson and purple. Its spire cannot rise too high above the 
city's smoke. Its broad portals cannot open on the passer- 
by with too elaborate beauty, grace, and solidity. It is the 
house of God among all the houses of men. It enshrines 
the unseen realities that save the souls of men. It embodies 
the truths that hold the earth secure. It is a missionary in 
the great city. In the crowded, hurrying noontide its calm 
stillness preaches. In the silvery moonlight its shining spire 
and lofty cross send down sermons. It is a power felt by all. 
Consciously or not, it is all the same ; it is a power for Chris- 
tianity, a visible witness that it rules yet in the earth, in the 
hearts and hands and purses of men. 

The more massive, then, the better. The more thousands 
put into solid stone for God's honor, the better in all our 
cities We have not built yet a church to cost a million. 
When shall we build one to cost five ? It will come some 
day. The wealth of the land is so fast accumulating, it is 
gathering in some hands so enormously, that the time will 
come when it will be invested in church towers w^orthy of the 
cities of our country. 

A parish that expends thousands in a tower does well, 
does wisely. It could spend the money in no more practical 
way for the progress of the Gospel and the Church in this 
country. Here it is all a free gift. Here it is a people's own 
testimony to the reality of the religion professed. And we 
are very sure that the parish which spends freely in this way 
will give freely in other ways. Liberality in one is liberality 
in all. Which are the parishes that give most largely, — those 
which are content that the houses of God should be shabby 



Massive Towers. 121 

and mean while people live in costly houses of their own, or 
those which have opened their hearts and their purses and 
have given to God largely of the best they had ? 

Costly churches take nothing from the missionary fund ; 
nothing from the help needed by the struggling pioneer 
congregation. Parishes that have risen to the work of a 
costly church and massive towers, are the parishes where the 
missionary fund will find its largest gifts, and the struggling 
parish its most helpful sympathy. Hearts well opened to 
one good work are easiest entered by the messengers for 
another. 

Let the massive towers go up everywhere, then, we say. 
Let the silent preachers, the strong, self-poised, firm-founded 
preachers, tell their story day and night to all that pass by. 
They in the great city will help in a thousand unobserved 
ways to proclaim the same story in the village and on the 
prairie. 

There are "sermons in stones,'' and most effective sermons 
in the stones of a noble church, into which men have, through 
faith in the unseen realities, transmuted the profits of their 
earthly labor and the increase of their gains. 
6 



ABOUT GOTHIC CHURCHES. 

^^ f^ OTHIC architecture is emphatically Christian archi- 
VJT tecture, whether we look at it from a historical or 
symbolical point of view, and it is accordingly becoming a 
rule, having almost the force of an axiom, that churches 
should be built only in that style." 

The above is the opening sentence of an article in a late 
number of a well-known Review. We have met the same 
thing in other places very often. We should like to know 
what a man really means when he says " Gothic architecture 
is emphatically Christian architecture." Is a pointed window 
in any sense more Christian than a square or round-headed 
window } Is there any more sanctity in a column when it 
is clustered, than there would be in the same stick hewn 
square 1 Nobody asserts this sort of thing, of course. Stone 
and timber are just as "Christian" piled up in one shape as 
in another. Neither, we suppose, would any one assert that 
to build a Gothic building is a more Christian act than to 
build a Greek, a Romanesque, or an ordinary American 
'^shingle style" erection. Neither, we suppose, is anyone 
prepared to claim that the contemplation of Gothic build- 
ings is greatly more Christianizing than the sight of any 
other style of architecture. A man is no better Christian for 
living in a Gothic house, or even for worshipping in a Gothic 
church. His Christianity would not be made super-eminent 
by living in a whole street of lancet windows, and seeing 
nothing but pointed arches all his lifetime. 

We must, it seems, then, come down to a comparatively 
low sense when we call Gothic architecture " emphatically " 



About Gothic Churches. 123 

Christian architecture. The high-sounding phrase has more 
sound than anything else, — the emphasis may not be very 
strong, after all. 

It is Christian in a " historical point of view," we are told. 
That is to say, we suppose it has originated in the Christian 
era. Christian men invented it. In that sense it is Chris- 
tian, This seems but a lame conclusion to the high-sounding 
phrases usually put forth by enthusiasts about Gothic archi- 
tecture, but positively that is all there is to be said. Gothic 
architecture is Christian because Christian men invented it, 
as heathen men began Egyptian, Greek, or heathen archi- 
tecture. So the mail-coach and the rail-car, the steamboat 
and the telegraph, Wall street and "greenbacks," are " em- 
phatically " Christian " in a historical point of view," because 
they have all been invented during the Christian era ! 

" In a symbolical point of view " we are not so sure. 
Symbolism is a mysterious affair. One needs to be careful. 
We suppose Gothic architecture succeeds in being very sym- 
bolical ; still, we have always understood that the Greek and 
the Russian manage to get a good deal of symbolism into 
their churches without making them particularly Gothic. 
"In a symbolical point of view," their churches are quite as 
Christian as our western ones. 

We suppose, however, that the phrase in reality only 
means that Gothic architecture is " emphatically " the archi- 
tecture for churches and ecclesiastical buildings. We have 
no objection in the world to any man thinking so. It is a 
matter of taste. But when it is announced as an axiom that 
" churches should be built only in Gothic style," we object 
to the axiom. We affirm it is no axiom at all. AVe say that 
the attempt to impose the axiom has done harm, and can 
only do more. The great mass of Christians do not worship 
in Gothic churches now. The great mass of Christians 
never have. There are other styles of building, by the wit- 
nessof all history, and for that matter of all symbolism, just 
as exclusively and emphatically Christian as the Gothic. 



124 Copy. 

In some countries and some centuries people have built 
Gothic churches, and have done well. In other countries 
and other ages they have built other kinds of churches, and 
have done well too. There is certainly nothing primitive or 
apostolic about Gothic architecture, and we decidedly object 
to being come down upon in this magisterial way by our 
modern Goths when they inform us that their pointed arches 
and their clustered columns and their timbered roofs are so 
'' emphatically " Christian. 

We have a high respect, personally, for Gothic architect- 
ure. We would not sav a word to wound the feelin2;s of 
the grimmest Goth, alive or dead In the day of it, Gothic 
architecture, like all real architecture, was a living thing. It 
had a purpose and it served that purpose. It did just what 
it was meant to do. But it has seemed to us, among others, 
that Gothic architecture, so-called now, was copyism, dilet- 
tanteism, and sham, to a very considerable extent. 

Historically, Gothic architecture grew up in the Western 
Church, when the Western Church had largely lost its prim- 
itive simplicity. It was not Christian architecture for a thou- 
sand years, at any rate. The type of church in the purest 
ages is not to be sought in a Gothic cathedral. Gothic archi- 
tecture is not the architecture of a preaching Church. It is 
not the architecture of a vernacular-speaking Church, and it 
is the architecture of a monastic Church. The Gothic church 
was built to accommodate the middle age type of Chris- 
tianity. It did that perfectly. It was an honest and sincere 
building for its day. Its day was not the primitive day, and 
its Christianity is not precisely ours. But people, when 
not original and sincerely honest in their work, will imitate. 
The power of imitation is tremendous. They say it is the 
ambition of every Cape Cod sea-captain to make a compe- 
tency, and build, like his neighbors, a Greek temple of 
shingles, on the sands near Provincetown, as his ideal of a 
dwelling-place. So now it is the ambition of every parish, 
and even every " society," to erect a Gothic church. As for- 



About Gothic Churches. 1 25 

merly each strove to have its windows square, and its non- 
descript spire higher, and its gilded pumpkin brighter than 
those of its neighbors, so now, by force of imitation, Episco- 
paUans and CongregationaHsts, Baptists, Presbyterians, Uni- 
tarians, and Nothingarians, all run to steep roofs and lancet 
windows. 

We are free to confess the sham Gothic to which the 
architects treat us is better than the gilt pumpkin style. If 
there is not reality enough among us to create an architect- 
ure for our needs, perhaps the Gothic will do as well as any 
to copy. But it leads to strange results ; for instance : there 
are Gothic churches by the dozen, where no man can make 
himself heard by five hundred people. We can name, at the 
moment, that number, where the preacher gesticulates, in 
dumb show, to a third of his congregation. They are not 
large churches either. Again, we have such churches in 
scores, where not only is hearing impossible, but if a cloud 
obscures the afternoon sun, seeing is impossible also. The 
congregation cannot see their Prayer Books. Others again 
there are, grandly built, costly piles, which no amount of fuel 
will warm in our northern winters, and whose " open tim- 
bered " roofs swelter a dissolving congregation under our 
hot American August suns. 

One would naturally suppose that a sensible people, in 
constructing a building, would have an eye to its purposes. 
It would really seem as though, since there is a vocal service, 
in which all are to join, and since there is preaching usually, 
that a church should be built with some regard to acoustics 
and optics. Since crowds are to assemble in it, it would be 
natural to look a little to ventilation. Since our climate is 
tropical in August and arctic in January, the building should 
be erected with reference to a possibility of comfort at both 
seasons. But, as a matter of fact, all these considerations 
are ignored. The architects who have introduced Gothic 
architecture in America have been generally merely copyists. 
They have simply reproduced something from another age, 



126 Copy. 

another climate, and other conditions, slavishly. They have 
built a '' Gothic church," pure, true, genuine Gothic, as they 
agreed. '' If you can hear in it, well. If not, why, do the 
best you can. If you freeze in winter, if you swelter in 
summer, if it is dark, musty, depressing, no matter; just 
comfort yourself with the knowledge that you have a genuine 
Gothic church !" 

So, for an ordinary parish in America, we have a mon- 
astic church of the fourteenth century. Chancel large 
enough to accommodate the entire monastery ; " stalls " 
arranged along the walls for the brethren, with a book board 
whereat to read prayers each in his turn ; a screen, perhaps, 
to shut out the 'profamcm vidgits^ and an altar at the wall, 
admirable to be seen at, in the elevation of the Host, but 
impossible to be heard from in an English Communion Ser- 
vice. And the unfortunate solitary rector wanders round in 
his huge monastic chancel, among stalls and screenery, lost 
to human view, and his voice piping and stridulent across a 
wilderness of empty spaces. 

There is, to be sure, a feeling that somehow the new church 
doesn't answer; that all this is cold and dark and lonesome; 
but then it is "a genuine Gothic church," the great archi- 
tect tells them; and the ecclesiological society will learnedly 
prove it, by showing from what century each detail was de- 
rived. 

Now, just as long as this sort of mere copying continues, 
we hold we shall never have a style in which churches now 
ought to be built. 

Gothic churches were built to see in, not to hear in. They 
were built to see the High Altar in, and the elevation of the 
Host in. They were built, the finest of them, to accommo- 
date a monastery of friars in the chancel. They were built 
for congregations that took no part in the service. The 
friars sung the service for them They were built to repre- 
sent and symbolize views that we repudiate, to accommodate 
wants which we know nothing about. That is simply a mat- 



About Gothic Churches. I 27 

ter of historic fact about " early pointed " and " late pointed," 
and all the rest of it. It explains why our unreasoning copy- 
ists of architects have so sadly failed, from the first day on 
until now, in creating satisfactory churches for our congrega- 
tions. 

As far as hearing goes, old Trinity, the first erection of its 
kind, is a failure. The last, we venture to say, is no better. 
Choral service, that is, a monastic service, is essential to the 
hearing in Trinity, because Trinity is a simple copy of the 
monastic church. 

We have long been of the opinion that our Church archi- 
tecture was to be sought in another direction, not in that of 
the degenerate- mediaeval Church. There is an architecture 
extant, much more nearly fitted to our wants. It is the 
architecture of a preaching Church, of a Church with grand 
preachers, — Basil, the Gregories, Chrysostom, for example. 
It is the architecture of a Church with a vernacular service, 
with a common prayer for all the people. It is the archi- 
tecture of the Church in its purest, most victorious days. It 
is an architecture to see in, to hear in, to have pure air 
in, to have warmth in, and coolness in. It is the architect- 
ure of the Greek Church, and of the primitive Church. 
There are examples enough extant, from the simple parish 
church to the grand cathedral of Justinian. 

Some day, when a real architect is born, we may go above 
our friends the Goths, and find that even if we can only copy, 
we may at least copy what we want, and get churches in 
which the congregation can see to read, and the clergyman 
can preach so as to be heard by more than half. 



A PROPRIETARY CHRISTIANITY 

THAT Christianity is losing its hold upon a mass of the 
population in our cities is evident to everybody who 
takes the trouble to look. Christianity, of any form what- 
ever, is so losing. The matter is serious enough to engage 
the attention not only of the Christian, but of the patriot. 
How can wx look forward to the time when, in our cities, 
and, indeed, largely over the whole country, there will be a 
substratum of the population, counted by millions, for whom 
there will be neither Sunday nor church attendance, nor 
any public recognition of Christian obligation ? That it is 
coming is indisputable. It is no cry of the alarmist, but a 
serious fact, that masses of the very bone and sinew of the 
country, w^orking people and their families, are entire 
strangers to public worship and to the shadow of church 
doors. What is the cause ? We are not speaking of the 
foreign-born population, of the German infidels, or of im- 
migrant Romanists, who, having thrown off their Romanism, 
have not yet found Christianity. We are speaking ofiVmer- 
ican and Protestant people, brought up to '' attend meeting" 
of some sort, in some degree intelligent and respectable. We 
are not speaking, either, of abject poor, of paupers or crim- 
inals, or " the dangerous classes ;" we are speaking of respect- 
able, independent mechanics and laborers and their families. 
And we say that, as things at present go, this class of people, 
ia our cities at least, are rapidly renouncing all connection 
w^ith any form of Christianity, and all habit of attending on 
its ministrations under any name. Why is it ? 

We answer, unhesitatingly, that one main reason, f/iema,m 



A Proprietary Christianity. 129 

reason, is that Christianity, as it exists among us, has rejected 
them. They are absokitely turned out of our churches. 
They are absolutely denied the Gospel in any shape. There 
is no message for them, and no ministrations provided for 
their families. It may seem, at first sight, extravagant to say 
so. But we have weighed what we say, and it is the simple 
truth, as any one can find who takes the pains to inquire. 

The voluntary system has produced that result for us, 
not because the voluntary system is bad in itself, but because, 
being under it, we have refused to work it, have had no faith 
in it, and have allowed the world to override the Church. 
See how it works. In every city there are a number of so- 
called "churches" of various names. They are really pri- 
vate and proprietary chapels, owned and managed by a 
number of people associated for the purpose. It costs a good 
deal to build them. It costs a good deal to pay the expenses 
of keeping them open. The music costs sometimes two 
thousand, sometimes ten thousand dollars a year. The 
preaching costs with the same difference. Other expenses 
swell the amount. From ten to twenty thousand or thirty 
thousand dollars a year is necessary to keep the " church " 
in operation for a couple of short sermons a Sunday, and a 
" lecture" now and then in the evening. This amount is 
raised, from the two or three hundred families or so that at- 
tend, by pew rents or assessments. They pay for the music 
and the preaching, and it is their own. They want to enjoy 
what they pay for. They object to having their pew cushions 
begrimed and their hymn books soiled by the thumbs of 
" greasy mechanics" and " common people's " women and 
children. Occupancy of a pew in their church indicates a 
certain standing, and entails a certain expenditure. But 
worse is behind. These various private chapels, misnamed 
" churches," are rivals. Each wants the best singing, the 
biggest organ, the loudest and most "drawing preaching." 
And each is straining itself to eclipse its rivals. The rich 
man is wanted by each, courted by each. Each prides itself 
6'^ 



1 30 Copy. 

on its wealth and influence. More and more the doors of 
each are closed to the man of moderate means, to the laborer 
or the mechanic. 

We unhesitatingly assert that every " fashionable church" 
built in one of our cities is a blow against Christianity. Called 
by what name we please, it is a caricature of the Church of 
God, a pretence and a sham, which is driving people into 
irreligion by the hundred. Its prosperity, its costly church, 
its magnificent organ, its splendid fittings, its music and its 
preaching are evil, and doing evil all the time. It is closing 
the kingdom of God against men. It is shutting out the 
souls Christ came to save. It is choking the Gospel of sal- 
vation. We never read about " the annual auction of pews" 
in "Plymouth Church" that the story does not make us 
shudder. Yearly the Gospel, or what calls itself the Gospel, 
sets itself up to be knocked down to the highest bidder. 
The road to heaven is opened first to the longest purse. The 
merchants, the bankers, the well-to-do professional men come 
together and buy the Word of God, as expounded by Mr. 
Beecher, at so many dollars apiece, and run the price so 
high that there is no chance among them for one of their 
clerks or porters. This is surely buying the pearl in a way 
not contemplated by the Lord. " Fashionable churches," 
pew auctions, and premiums for choice seats ; subscriptions 
taken in stock, "fine singing," " great preaching,!' exclusive 
and highly respectable congregations, the whole system, and 
all its details, are Satan's last device to destroy Christianity 
from among this people. 

Our own skirts are not clear. We can take no special 
credit to ourselves, we Churchmen. Against all our prin- 
ciples, convictions, and feelings we have allowed ourselves 
to become, in this matter, guilty before God with the rest. 
We also have succumbed to the world, have put faith in 
dollars and not in God, and have gone into the proprietary 
chapel and stock arrangement like the rest. We will be as 
" fashionable" as other people. We will be behind none in 



A Proprietary Christianity. 13I 

elegant private churches and luxurious pews. We, too, will 
court the rich, because the pew-rents are necessary, and 
will turn coldly on the poor, because he is supposed not to 
have the wherewithal to pay his ticket. Against all our 
principles, we say. We never could forget that we are a 
Church, and not a sect. We have been shame-faced ; have 
felt our inconsistency and disgrace in this matter. The 
clergy especially have felt shamed at being made the private 
chaplains of a select number of respectable families. They 
have felt how miserably that position caricatures their real 
office and disgraces their divine commission. But the blight 
has been upon us also. We are tied hand and foot to pew 
doors, and smothered in churches which we call God's 
houses, but w^hich, in plain truth, are only the private prop- 
erty of the people who are well enough off to buy or rent the 
pews they contain. And so we are all drifting together to 
the same doom. Religion is becoming the business of res- 
pectable and well-to-do people. A great gulf is digging 
between the man that can help build a costly church and the 
man who cannot. American Christianity sells its ministra- 
tions to the highest bidder, and the empty purse need not 
apply. 

Can the patriot look on this drift complacently ? Can the 
Christian face the fact and be content ? Is the outlook one 
that brings comfort to either ? If not, how is the evil to be 
met ? 

Not by giving Christianity as a dole. Not by offering it 
as one does cold victuals to a beggar. Mission chapels for 
the poor are only an aggravation of the evil. The well- 
meaning people engaged in them, clergy and laity, notwith- 
standing any apparent good they do (and they are doing 
good), are merely insulting the people they would serve, and 
caricaturing Christianity and the Church still more. They 
will not only offer cold food, but they will insist it shall be 
eaten in the wood-shed. The poor shall have the Gospel 
by their kindness, but they shall have it in another place, and 



132 Copy. 

shall not come between the wind and the doors of their 
cushioned pews. Nay, it is just as well to face the evil 
honestly. It will do no good to palliate it by sham medica- 
ments. If we are not prepared to cure it on God's principles, 
let us not attempt it on the devil's. Our people must have 
faith enough to take the Gospel as God sent it, — for all. 
They must be content to throw their pew doors into the fire ; 
must be content to welcome anybody and everybody into the 
house of God. When they offer a church for consecration, 
they must mean what they say. They must give it to God, 
and renounce all "stock," and all pew-premiums, and such 
mammon-service inside it. It must be a free gift to the Lord, 
for the use of His children. But the old question comes 
again, " How shall the church be supported ? " Has it not 
come to a queer pass that the Gospel cannot be preached 
till we have built a church and rented the pews ? If this 
really be the case, is it not worth while inquiring whether we 
are preaching the Gospel at all .^ How did they convert the 
world before there were any " fashionable churches 1 " 

Is Christianity dead 2 Is it the fact that there is no motive 
to induce a man to give for the support of the Gospel, except 
he purchase a right to shut other people out 1 In all the 
Word of God is there a single warning " not to neglect the 
payment of your pew-rents .? " Is there anywhere in Holy 
Scripture, or in Ancient Councils, or Fathers, the command, 
" Bring your pew-rents into the store-house ? " We have 
vacated the Scripture ground altogether. That is the plain 
fact. We have distrusted God, and have put our faith in the 
auctioneer; and we prosper accordingly. We have deliber- 
ately foregone the inspired ground, have renounced and re- 
fused it, and are occupying a ground of our own, to which 
no blessing is promised. 

The result is evident in more ways than one. We have 
educated people on the pew-rent idea, and we see the effect 
when, for missionary or any other purpose, w^e appeal to 
them, not on the pew-rent idea, but on the Divine motive. 



A Proprietary Christianity. 133 

Their response is accordingly. Tithes ! What idea of tithes 
have any of our people who pay for their seat in church as 
they pay for their other, nearly as exclusive seat, at the 
opera? Talk to these good people about *' stewardship," 
and "responsibility," and "giving as God has prospered 
them," and the consecration of tenths. We have taken all 
the meaning out of those old-world phrases. Responsibility 
to God, in money, we have made to mean the renting of an 
eligible pew. 

The Church needs awakening on this matter. She is 
false to her duties and responsibilities, asleep in the arms of 
the world, and enslaved. The clergy ought to speak. They 
owe it to their Master and themselves to break the chains of 
this debasing slavery which padlocks them to a class. Better 
the street for a church, and a barrel for an altar, than a 
Christianity which, for the sake of cushioned pews and velvet 
fringes, has forgotten its message to the whole world. 

There is no strength like the strength of God ; no trust 
like trust in the Lord of hosts. If the Church will but plant 
herself on her birthright, and claim God's promises by stand- 
ing on God's ground, she will change the drift which is 
sweeping millions in this land to heathenism, and will amaze 
herself with the discovery of her own power and resources. 
If, with all her claims to Catholicity and primitive truth and 
faith, she is content to take her ease in cushioned pews, and 
peep and mutter in fashionable private chapels w^hich the 
respectable John Smith and his friends have built for their 
own delectation, she must blame nobody if people take her 
for what her clothes represent her, — a highly respectable sect^ 
much patronized by the respectable Mr. Smith and his com- 
peers. Hov/ many of her clergy, to say nothing of her thou- 
sands of intelligent and earnest laity, are content to have her 
stand in that guise before the community ? 



A LOST ACT OF WORSHIP. 

THERE is one thing which, in all forms of public wor- 
ship, true or false, has filled a large space. About this 
thing the Old Testament is full. A large portion of the 
ceremonial law is taken up with the proper methods and 
limits of the performance of this act of worship. This thing 
is the giving of offerings. We do not mean the offering of 
sacrifices, properly so called, but the consecrating, by offering 
it to God, a portion of the wealth with which God has 
blessed us. The males of all Israel were to appear three 
times in each year, at solemn times, before the Lord, and the 
law is definite, — ''They shall not appear empty." 

The change from Jewish worship to Christian was not 
a change of the substance of worship, or of the Being to 
whom worship was to be offered. The object of worship, 
we say, was not changed. The God of the Old Testament 
is the God also of the New. All Christians believe and 
accept and worship the God of Moses, David, and Isaiah. 

The substance of worship was not changed. It still 
continued to consist of confession, prayer, and praise. The 
type of a past sacrifice was substituted for that of a future 
sacrifice. As the sacrifices of the law prophesied of the 
death of the great Sacrifice, so the Supper of the Lord doth 
" show forth the Lord's death till He come again " The 
Christian worship, like the Jewish, gathers all its significance 
from the great central fact of all true worship, — the sacrifice 
of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." 

Since the two worships are so identical — addressed to 
the same Being, and consisting, in all respects, of the same 



A Lost Act of Worship. 1 35 

essence — are we to suppose that the making of offerings, so 
important a part in one, should be wholly wanting in the 
other? The idea of an offering, as distinguished from a 
propitiatory sacrifice, is that of consecrating a man's gains, 
the fruit of his life and work, by presenting a portion to 
Him who gives all life and strength. The first-fruit is 
made holy, that the whole lump may be holy. The acknow^l- 
edgment is made of God the giver, that on Him depends 
all good, that from him comes all blessing, and that a man 
so recognizes Him and His law, and so lives under that 
law, that he can humbly hope his life is acceptable, and 
that God will accept some part of the labor of his brain 
and hands. Is this idea wholly lost in Christianity ? Is it 
not an idea at the very base of any religious life whatever ? 
Is it not as essential to a Christian as to a Jew ? Or, if we 
look at it from the other side, that an offering is an acknowl- 
edgment made to God of blessings received, has not the 
Christian as much to make acknowledgment for as the Jew ? 

The early Church clearly answered all these questions 
in the affirmative. She incorporated into her services the 
idea of the offering. She was not content only with prayer 
and praise and confession. She also required a material 
gift — something more than w^ords, an actual offering to be 
laid upon the altar — as an essential part of her worship. 

The idea of the offering as a central act of w^orship — 
as a condition of appearing before the Lord in His house — 
passed over from the Jewish Church to the Christian as 
naturally as prayer, as naturally as the Psalms, and the 
reading of the prophets. The Communion Service, in all 
ancient forms, takes for granted an offering. It was from the 
very bread and wine offered that sufficient was taken for 
the Holy Communion, and, while it lasted, for the Agape, or 
Feast of Charity. 

In this respect our own Communion Service goes on 
ancient models. That, too, provides for offerings, supposes 
offerings, takes offerings for granted as an essential part of 



136 Copy. 

the most solemn service. The Offertory m the Communion 
Office is the witness for the ancient, the universal idea of 
worship, that an essential part thereof is the placing of gifts 
on the altar. 

It is another of the cases where our theories shame our 
practice, where our professions put our actions to the blush, 
that the offertory has become, in our worship, almost an 
impertinence. Our people do not understand its meaning. 
Our clergy too often do not dare, if they know it themselves, 
to make the people know it. 

We have actually heard " good Churchmen " complain 
that "jingling of money on the plates" disturbed their 
devotions ! So hopelessly far away from any glimpse of the 
truth were they, that a solemn act of worship, as old as any 
w^orship of Jehovah on earth, since the fall, seemed to them 
an unmeaning interference with devotion, and suggested 
to them only the shop and the counter. They came to 
worship, undisturbed by any reminiscence of their week-day 
lives, and here come those plates, and the jingling money 
carries them out of their religious " frames " to the market 
again. 

For, alas ! is not the modern type of religion one that 
cuts a man's life in two .^ Is it not for Sundays only.^ 
Has it any connection with the business of yesterday and 
to-morrow ? Is not the complaint a terrible satire on the 
almost hopeless darkness and heathenism which envelops 
men who have never yet seen that Christianity, to be good 
for any thing, must consecrate all life to the Lord, — shop 
life and counter life as well as pew life, dealings with men 
as well as dealings with God ? Is it not startling to find 
Christian men confessing that their week-day lives are a ser- 
vice of Mammon, their money connected only with thoughts 
of the world and the devil. 

Now it was just this terrible blunder that the offertory 
was designed, for one thing, to prevent. To keep men from 
falling into this snare of the devil it was provided that 



A Lost Act of Worship. 137 

offerings should be a part of their Divine service ; that they 
should connect their money with religious ideas, their gain 
of it with religious associations ; that their week-day lives 
should not be a sordid slavery to the world, but a service 
done to God, the fruits of v/hich could be offered acceptably 
in His own temple. 

It is the neglect of the offertory, and the teachings which 
belong to it, which has fostered this mistake at the very roots 
of Christian life and duty. And the remedy for the mistake, 
and for a great many others as well, is to set forth the 
doctrine of the offertory, and to put the thing itself into 
habitual, reverent use. 

Men are to be taught that giving to the Lord is an essen- 
tial part of public worship, — quite as essential as singing or 
praying. They are to be instructed in the plain truth that 
words must go out in deeds. They must recognize the 
alms-basin as an essential part of church furniture, the 
putting of money into it as a devotional act. Their special 
attention must be called to the name by which their con- 
tributions, given in church, are called in the plain English 
of the Prayer Book, — "the devotions of the people." 

The whole duty of giving has grown dim, the sense of 
responsibility for v/ealth dead, in the minds of men. The 
Lord's treasury is like a beggar's dish. The clergy have 
grown cowardly about this part of Christian duty. When 
they urge it, it is with half arguments and cowardly com- 
promises. They have a feeling that it almost degrades them 
to "dun for paltry money," for even a good cause. So 
highly "spiritual" have we all become, that our religion 
must not even name filthy lucre. 

Meanwhile, there stands that solemn service of the offer- 
tory — clear, bold, uncompromising — making giving a sol- 
emn act of religion ; calling the offered thing by its old 
name, a "devotion ; " bringing forward this act of piety in 
the forefront of the most solemn religious service of the 
Church of God ; asking its performance as repentance and 



1 38 Copy. 

faith are asked, — as a preparation for the worthy reception 
of Christ's Body and Blood. 

In these days we know no doctrine of primitive Chris- 
tianity which needs reviving more than this doctrine of the 
offertory; no teaching which is more needed by the men of 
the time than the emphatic teaching of that most ancient and 
primitive institution. 

Men need to be taught that they bring their whole lives 
to churcli with them, that they do not drop at the door the 
stains of the market and the 'Change. They require to have 
it pressed home that the gains which cannot be consecrated 
to the Lord, are gains which are " the price of blood," — the 
blood of their own souls. They want the truth that God 
holds them responsible for every bargain and speculation, 
and that all the singing and praying in the world will not 
make an unjust profit other than a curse. They are to know 
that every day is a God's service or a devil's service, and that 
two hours a Sunday given to God will not pay for a Mon- 
day devoted to the devil Mammon more than to the devil 
Belial. 

Therefore their lives are to be brought into the church. 
That is just what the church is for, that men should bring 
their lives into it, and measure them by the cubit of the 
sanctuary. They are there to be reminded of the market 
and the shop and the ledger ; and if the reminding stings 
them and pains them, so much the more do they need it. 
They are there to have their doings over the counter, on 
'Change, in the street, in the forum, brought to the test of 
God's eternal law, that they may be saved from ruin. And 
the offertory is there to do this. That is the special use and 
need of that religious service in all times. 

This money is the result of a man's work. He has put 
the mora] worth of his life into it. He has gained it well 
or ill. It represents faithful work in his place for God and 
man, or it represents wolfish greed or foxy fraud. He is 
asked to offer to the Lord, as a religious service ; to give 



A Lost Act of Worship. 139 

to his Saviour, and to lay on His holy altar this money which 
so represents the moral value of his life. Can he do it ? 
Can his gains be blessed ? Are they so clear from wrong — • 
so free from all rust of injustice, fraud, or deceit — that he 
can lay them without shame on that altar whence he is to 
receive the heavenly gift of his Saviour's spiritual body and 
blood ? It was meant, this service, to bring a man so face 
to face with his own life. It does so bring him, if it be 
taught in its full meaning, and given its true importance. 

Again, a man is asked to say whether. Christian though 
he call himself, he is net practically an atheist when it 
comes to business. Does God give him wealth, more or 
less, or does he get it by his own strength, skill, shrewdness, 
— by luck or chance ? Is he responsible to anybody for 
what he has ?. Is there any law at all about it ? Are the silve!' 
and the gold the Lord's, or was the devil not lying when he 
claimed the kingdoms of the world and their glory for his 
own, and not cheating when he said, '' All these things will 
I give thee if thou wilt fall down and vrorship me ? " Root 
questions these, old questions, gray as time ; but questions 
that need asking every day, and that every man needs to 
ask himself until he get an answer that will stand. The 
offertory puts them emphatically, and answers them just as 
emphatically, — " All things come of Thee, and of Thine, O 
Lord, have we given Thee. " It is a religious act of loyalty 
to the Master of the universe, a solemn acknowledgment of 
the Sovereign Lord of all the world, whose tenants we are. 
We have said nothing of the results to the treasury of 
the Master, of a revival among us of the spirit and power 
of this almost lost act of worship. We have tried to 
call attention to it solely from its religious side. We have 
asked for it its place as a high religious service. We have 
asked that it be so set forth, preached, explained, and en- 
forced. We have demanded it for the consciences of the 
men of this day. Never in the world's story was it so 
needed. 



1 40 Copy. 

The result, of course, if ever Christian men shall even 
begin to do their duty of giving on Christian principles, 
will be the world's conversion in about an ordinary lifetime. 
Meanwhile, let us begin to put this business of giving on 
its true ground. Let us deliver it from meanness and 
beggary, and teach it as what it is, — a profound and solemn 
act of reverent worship and awe, before God's altar; an 
act of worship wherein all mysteries meet in this, the 
deepest mystery of devotion, that mortal man can give to 
the Eternal Lord and have the gift accepted. 



CULTIVATING THE SOCIAL ELEMENT. 

SOME time since, at a Church gathering, we heard an 
able and interesting discussion on the question of pro- 
moting the social element in our churches. It was assumed 
as desirable that all classes of Christians, rich and poor, high 
and low, should be brought nearer together, should be made 
acquainted and taught to feel that they are brethren of a 
common family, that they live a common life, and are bound 
by a common law of love and help. It is encouraging to 
know that the old principle that ail Christian men are 
brethren is really recognized yet, at least by the clergy and, 
at all events, in theory, and that nobody has the audacity to 
deny the word of the Saviour. 

But it does seem a trifle odd that at this day it should be 
proposed as a subject of debate how this principle, which is 
the very basis of Christian life and conduct, shall be acted 
upon. 

It is a pity, perhaps, that the form in w^hich we cast such 
questions should blind our eyes to their extraordinary char- 
acter. There is nothing said in the Scriptures about culti- 
vating the social element. There is a good deal said, and 
said in a very decisive and rough way, about the fact that 
all Christian men are brothers^ — brothers of one family. There 
is a good deal said and hinted about the style and character 
of Christians who forget that fact. There are rather broad 
hints that Christians who forget it, or deny it, are a sort of 
Christians that will meet with very decisive treatment at the 
hands of Him whom they lyingly call Lord. There is little 
account taken in the Word of God of the " social distinc- 



142 Copy. 

tions," which are such a stumbling-block and barrier in the 
way of cultivating the social element. 

It is an alarming thing to see on what low grounds we 
are content to put principles. We talk about Christians be- 
coming more " social." The Word of God talks about Chris- 
tians being one household, a family of brothers, so closely 
bound that the meanest cannot suffer but that all suffer with 
him. 

The fact that a discussion about cultivating the social 
element in the Church is a possible thing; that we can 
seriously enter into arguments for bringing Christians nearer 
together, and for interesting each somewhat in the other, 
suggests another discussion more important and serious and 
personal by far. It suggests the question, whether we are 
really Christians at all ; whether, on the whole, judged by 
the New Testament, there is any corporate Christian life 
among us ; whether we have ever learned the alphabet of 
Christ's Gospel } 

If we should find a number of brothers and sisters of the 
same family, children of the same father and mother, dis- 
cussing the propriety of becoming acquainted with each 
other to the extent of exchanging greetings on the streets, of 
cultivating the "social element" so far that they at least 
should learn each other's names, it would strike us as a 
very odd sort of family, and they as very queer brothers. 
And if we found this sort of discussion recognized as a per- 
fectly legitimate and natural one in all the families of a land, 
we would be pretty sure to make up our minds that that 
land was hardly worth saving, and that the families in it 
should disappear as promptly as convenient. By terms the 
very strongest does the New Testament express the intimate 
relations which exist between the members of the Church of 
God. That Church, according to the declarations there, 
was instituted for the very purpose of creating and maintain- 
ing such relations, and exhibiting them before the world. 
The New Testament pours the most sovereign contempt 



Cultivating the Social Element. 143 

upon all the distinctions which exist among men. In Christ 
there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, slave 
nor free. The new relationship overwhelms and sweeps 
away all that men think most marks or separates them. 

It is rather late in the day, it sets strange fancies afloat 
in one's brain, it suggests strange questions, to find it a legit- 
imate and necessary subject of inquiry in a Church, in the 
nineteenth century, how so-called Christians are to become 
acquainted with each other, and be "sociable," when mem- 
bers of the same congregation. 

In the discussion mentioned it was taken for granted that 
this is a desirable consummation. It must be conceded that 
the supposition is a very modest one. Nevertheless, the con- 
summation is by no means easy of attainment. It was shown 
that the members of the same congregation often worship in 
the same church, in pews side by side, for years, and know 
nothing of each other but the names. It was shown that there 
is no close bond of sympathy, no feeling of unity of aim, no 
common interest in the same good works among large num- 
bers of Church members. As far as the Church is concerned, 
or Christianity, they are living isolated lives, lives of utter 
indifference and strangeness to other Christians. A congre- 
gation cannot be brought together as a unit even in social 
life for any one Christian purpose. But there is worse 
behind. Our congregations, in the general, consist of people 
of the same condition in the social order ; and among them, 
even being such, there is the acknowledged want of unity 
and common sympathy. But besides these people, comfort- 
able and well to do, there is an increasing class of people in 
the country in narrow circumstances, — people who have 
dropped out of the circles of wealth, abundance, or even 
comfort. And these brethren, ^vhether they belong to our 
congregations as worshippers or as communicants, are left 
pretty much " out in the cold." They have not even the 
bond of the ordinary social and society life. The one tie 
which connects them with their brethren who live in plenty, 



144 Copy. 

luxury, or easy comfort, is the tie of the common faith and 
common salvation, and this tie, as we find ourselves bewail- 
ing so often, is a tie very slight and weak at present. 

It is for this class that the clergy are the most concerned. 
When they discuss the way to cultivate best the social ele- 
ment in the Church, this class is tlie most prominent in their 
minds. Well-to-do people, wealthy and comfortable people, 
can take care of themselves about such matters. They can, 
more or less, decide for themselves the extent and limit of 
the social connections they will be pleased to form. But the 
others can make no such decision. They are overborne by 
the narrow circumstances of their lives. They must be con- 
tent to live with no intercourse between themselves and their 
more fortunate brethren, if those more fortunate brethren 
choose to have it so. And, more and more, in this country 
they do choose to have it so. Distinctions of class is the 
penalty paid for a high civilization. As we advance, in 
America, we find our road the common road of all peoples 
hitherto. Wealth is accumulated in some hands enormously, 
and there are more and more reduced to poverty or even 
want. Broader and broader the lines are drawn between 
those who have and those who have not. A different educa- 
tion, a different style of living, different tastes, and different 
surroundings, mark more and more these classes. The old 
time of the fathers, when the people of an American city or 
village were pretty near a common level in education, wealth, 
and taste, has passed aw^ay forever, and our country is enter- 
ing, or rather has fully entered, on the phase of a more ad- 
•vanced national life, where classes exist, distinctly formed, 
and more distinctly formed socially, because our Republican 
constitution prevents their existence politically. This form- 
ing of classes, this cutting up a nation into parties which 
have no common bond of sympathy, which are even, in some 
conditions, put in a position of antagonism and hostility each 
to the other, is a condition of things thoroughly bad and 
dangerous, as it is, of course, thoroughly unchristian. 



Cultivating the Social Element. 1 45 

It was one of the purposes of the establishment of the 
kingdom of God on earth that it should throw over this 
universal tendency to separation a bond of unity stronger 
than any power of repulsion. Men were to be ^' one in 
Christ Jesus," separated in other things, as the case might 
be. The brother of low degree was to be own brother in 
the household of God to the brother o_^ highest degree. 
There was to be no respect of persons in this family ; and 
the Christian faith, and the common salvation, were to be 
the universal bonds and sympathies which were to conquer 
all the evils of earthly differences, and make men brothers, 
in a sense wide as the world and enduring as eternity. That 
function of the Church, as a matter plain to observation, is 
no longer fulfilled. There is danger in the fact, very serious 
danger, beyond what most people dream. And the danger is 
more serious in our ovvm country than in any other in the 
world. The existence here of a class who have no sympathy 
and no social connection with other classes ; who are drlftincj 
farther and farther away from any brotherhood with them, so 
far that even the Church, which in other lands is a common 
home for prince and peasant, a place where a duchess and a 
seamstress may kneel side by side in a divine equality of 
need and hope, of faith and prayer ; the existence and in- 
creasing numbers of this class, utterly separate from the 
others even as Christians, has a tenfold more serious meaning 
for America, from the very fact that each man has equal 
political power, and that numbers, and numbers only, count 
in voting. 

Naturally enough the clergy, and some among the 
serious-thoughted laity, are anxious to restore this function 
to the Church. They take it for granted that its restoration 
is desirable. They do not debate that. They only debate 
how the restoration can be effected. But they take for 
granted another thing, whic'i is not quite so indisputable ; 
this, namely, that the members of the Church in any large 
number desire to see thi3 function of a Church Catholic in 

; 



146 Copy. 

operation. There is nothing more certain than that there is 
no desire of that kind in the minds of our congregations 
generally. 

It is to this difficulty that attention needs to be directed. 
If the members of our congregations were at all anxious to 
promote social intercourse, brotherly feeling, and common 
sympathies among different classes, we should not long have 
to discuss the manner or method of the doing. But it is 
just the misery of our feeble position that we are so organ- 
ized, and the Church is so worked, that any cultivation of 
the social element which shall make '' rich and poor meet 
together " is impossible. 

We remember how struck we were in the early days of 
our ministry, when, having interested ourselves in the well- 
being of some old country families, emigrants and poor, we 
were asked by a vestryman, " What is the use of wasting 
your time over those people ? There is not fifty dollars' 
worth of pew-rent in the whole crowd." 

We may as well face the facts. And the facts are that 
our congregations want in them rich people, at least well-to- 
do people, — people who can pay pew-rents. They are so 
organized, that people who cannot well pay pew-rents are 
not wanted, are a detriment to the congregation in every 
way, lessen its income, lower its "respectability," and if 
present in any large numbers keep out people who are desir- 
able, and who do add pecuniary strength to the congregation. 

The clergyman who remembers that he is sent as Christ's 
servant, and not man's, to all for whom Christ died, in 
the fervor of his zeal and a burning sense of duty will go 
among the people, will try to bring them to church, and 
generally care for them as a pastor should. But he is chilled 
by the indifference of his congregation. He cannot get his 
people to look at the matter as he does. His efforts are 
rendered fruitless by their apathy, perhaps, by their 
opposition. He is puzzled. He preaches Christian 
brotherhood with renewed zeal and feeling. He is 



Cultivating the Social Element. 1 47 

shamed and shocked at the discovery that there is no 
practical acknowledgment of the brotherhood in Christ 
among those whom he instructs, and to whom he ministers 
the bread of life. He may discover the fact in time, or he 
may not, that the congregational plan on which we are work- 
ing is a plan expressly made to prevent any realization of 
human brotherhood in Christ. Whether he discover the fact 
or not, it is a fact all the same. His labor is a labor in 
antagonism to his position as the minister of a congregation 
of well-to-do folk, who have built a church for themselves 
and families, and put an organ in it, and procured a choir, 
etc., and hired him to be their pastor. 

The plan makes it ruinous to his congregation (his 
"parish," as we oddly enough call it) to bring in any large 
number of people of narrow means, much more any large 
number of really needy people. His people do not want 
them. There is no pew-rent of any account among them. 
They cannot contribute to sustain a five-thousand dollar 
choir, to build " a new and elegant Gothic church," to up- 
holster in velvet plush or silk the pews of the one they have. 
They are in the way, are more or less nuisances ; an un- 
comfortable, troublesome, poorly-dressed, and impecunious 
crowd generally, and he is wasting his efforts in trying to 
bring them and his wealthy and comfortable people into any 
close connection. 

There is still more in his way. In large numbers our 
congregations really want to have a social element among 
them, and in large numbers they do have it. This element 
scarcely takes a shape that the clergyman much admires. 
It is not specially Christian. Nevertheless, it is a so- 
cial element. The members of the congregation meet, 
on the whole, at the same parties, visit the same houses, 
dance at the same balls, have boxes at the opera alike, 
patronize the same milliners and dressmakers, and keep 
" the social element " in a score of ways, of this kind, in 
pretty active ebulition, at certain seasons. They have a 



148 Copy. 

high idea, too, of the importance of that "element," as they 
understand it. They desire to " cultivate " it. And, ac- 
cording to their notions, in order to cultivate it they consider 
it very necessary to keep '' thei)- church " exclusive. They 
wish the pews to be taken by those of their own set. They 
consider the parish a pleasant one in proportion as it con- 
sists of those they meet "in society." One main function 
of "the parish," as they understand it, is to encourage "the 
social element " in this way. They are delighted to have it 
made up of people one can associate with, and they are 
actually alarmed and shocked when the rector busies him- 
self in bringing in these people that nobody knows. 

On the whole, it is pretty evident, when one considers 
the matter, that in order to cultivate the social element in 
the sense alone tolerable to a Christian man, we need to 
convert the great mass of Church members, baptized and 
communicating, to the A B C of Christianity. It will be no 
easy undertaking, under our present arrangements. It is an 
undertaking, however, which, easy or not, must be very 
seriously undertaken and carried through, let break what 
may. Any way, it is best to get right down to the real diffi- 
culty, and look the father-wrong boldly in his ugly face. 



THE ART OF SPENDING. 

WE have inherited in America the accumulated capital 
of the Old World. Its civilization, its art, learning, 
wealth, experience, came to us as the capital on which to 
begin business here in the new land. 

On the whole, the most of us are disposed to think we 
have done pretty well with this capital Whether, indeed, 
we have been in business long enough to see how matters 
will turn out at last, is a thing to some a little doubtful. 
Whether, too, a bountiful nature and a rich new world have 
not helped us more than our own wisdom, may be a question. 
But on the whole, we are, as a people, well content with the 
progress we have made, and on all fit occasions, and some 
unfit, from stump, platform, and barrel-head, we are fond of 
hearing that progress glorified, and our own virtue and wis- 
dom exalted. 

There is one thing, however, in which we certainly have 
not improved on Europe, and particularly in which we have 
not improved on England. Our rich men have not, as a 
class, found out what to do with their riches. They have 
learned to make money, but the art of spending it is an art 
yet undiscovered. If we could but introduce the " division 
of labor " principle into this matter, as possibly we may in 
some future golden age, it would help us greatly. If the 
men who can make money, and the men who delight in the 
business, were furnished all facilities for the gratification of 
their desire, and the money made by them were immediately 
passed over into the hands of those who delight to spend it, 
and who know how to do that properly, it would simpHfy 
matters very much. 



1 50 Copy. 

So far, the art of spending properly has been little 
attended to. The art of getting has occupied everybody's 
attention, and we have, as a people, learned by practice to 
excel. Meanwhile, more and more, the other art becones a 
necessity. As fortunes increase, as the community gets 
richer, as year by year we look over the tax-list, and find 
incomes swelling away up into the hundred thousand, it 
becomes a serious matter what we shall do with our gains. 

Manifestly, it will not answer for men to spend them on 
themselves. No matter how elegantly and tastefully, it will 
not answer for men to spend wealth solely in their own grati- 
fication. The public conscience of the land is pretty clear 
on that subject, and is likely to become even clearer. There 
is a responsibility recognized in this matter, and people are 
likely, more and more, to be brought up to the test of that 
responsibility. Money is looked upon as laying its possessor 
under obligations of some sort to the community. He is 
bound to spend in a way that shall do good, and not injury, 
to those about him. He has no right to use wealth to cor- 
rupt or debauch, or in any way injure, others. He is 
bound to use it and spend it so that others may be bene- 
fited. 

When men are beginning to count their millions in the 
older portions of the country, and the immense influences 
for good or evil these millions possess is beginning to be felt 
in new and strange ways ; when it is seen to be possible that 
these enormous sums may be so used as to debauch a legis- 
lature, or control a city and its policy, or give their owner 
the mastery over the convenience, the time, 01 the coming 
and going of large portions of the community, it is pretty 
evident that we must begin to get down to first principles 
again, and ask ourselves if we understand the meaning, the 
uses, and the responsibilities of wealth, and if there be any 
law about the manner of spending it. Of course, what holds 
with regard to the millions will hold also, in due proportion, 
with regard to the hundreds and the thousands. 



The Art of Spending. 15^ 

Has the pulpit been quite faithful to its duty in this 
thing ? We think it has decidedly failed. It has gone on 
no clear knowledge, on no fixed and settled principle. Its 
teaching has been spasmodic and uncertain. It has given 
proper weight to many duties ; but this duty, which is, just 
now, a most important duty, and one so very little under- 
stood — the duty, namely, of spending money wisely — it has 
passed over ignorantly. 

We cannot, otherwise, account for the tasteless and 
coarse way in which rich Americans spend money ; for the 
aping of a style that sits upon them very clumsily ; for an 
expenditure which is merely sensual, — which does nothing 
even for art or the ornaments of a higher civilization, which 
half excuses a great deal of European recklessness. Our 
wealthy people show extravagance in mere eating and drink- 
ing and wearing ; the artistes patronized are the cook, the 
concocter of sham wines, and " the modiste. Vulgar waste, 
coarse extravagance, reckless expenditure on the body ; 
fashion because it is fashion, show for show's sake, this is 
the rule for spending among us so far. And daily there is 
more to spend. Daily the rich grow richer and more nu- 
merous, and daily the rules of a wise spending are becoming 
more and more essential to be known. 

Surely the rich have duties, and high duties, because of 
their riches. Surely, in a new civilization like ours, they 
owe obligations to literature, to art, to all that goes to the 
adornment of human life. If they spend, as spend they 
must, why not spend on what will gratify other people as 
well as themselves, — on those things which are common 
boons to the whole community.^ A rich collection of books, 
though the owner may not be able to use them, would be a 
public good in any of our cities, if they could be but con- 
sulted by those who know how to do so, and who would 
prize them too highly to misuse the opportunity. A col- 
lection of pictures, now and then thrown open to all proper 
persons, would be another public good. Even an architect- 



152 Copy. 

ural house is no special blessing to its owner. It is a beau- 
tiful sight in all eyes And tastefully-arranged grounds — 
lawn and copse, and bright masses of flovN^ers — even seen 
through a paling, are something to be thankful for in a 
crowded city or its outskirts; how much more if wealth, 
and large-heartedness in its use, should throw the gates open 
now and then to those who must live in narrow quarters, 
and have forgotten even the look of a violet or the odor of 
a rose. 

There has been, so far, marvellously little public^spirit 
of this sort in the United States among our rich men. And 
they are getting their reward. The city where " the mer- 
chant prince " lived and made his millions, even where he 
never left a sign in any noble gift to public uses, buries him 
and forgets him, or remembers his name only in connection 
v/ith "Jones's alley, " or " Sm.ith's dock. " 

That we have not learned to spend is shown also in as 
striking a way in the condition of our churches, our mis- 
sions, our schools, and our colleges. As far as numbers go, 
the Church embraces a very large share of the spendable 
money of the country. She is in good degree responsi- 
ble for the way in which a very large number of very large 
incomes are got rid of If she allow those incomes to go 
in mere eating and drinking and vulgar show ; in milliner 
and modiste nonsense on the part of w^omen that are gen-- 
erally believed to have souls somewhere concealed under 
their vulgar display of tasteless dress a.nd finery ; and in 
pure sensuality, in gluttony and drinking, in "fast" horses 
and "fast" living on the part of the husbands, brothers, 
and sons of these women, who, also, arc believed to have 
about them souls, consciences, and all other things which 
naturally belong to men, — if, we say, she allows this sort 
of thing in men or women, without very earnest and per- 
sistent endeavors to mend it all, it is certainly very mild 
to say that she is recreant to her duty That she does 
allow it is only too sadly evident. That she does not 



The Art of Spending. 153 

boldly lift up her voice and preach the truth about spend- 
ing as well as the truth about getting is a matter of evi- 
dent fact. 

Where are our rich men building churches ? Where 
are they endowing our colleges ? Where are our missionaries 
supplied with capital given outright for their support? 
W^here are our bishops to look for the thousands they 
need in every diocese, to propagate the faith, and lay new 
and wider foundations ? It is a thing to go from end to 
end of the Church as a wonder, when a Baldwin, a Schoen- 
berger, or a Baird has found out how to spend nobly 
the wealth they have nobly earned. Such instances as 
these should be the rule, and not the exception. The duty 
should be taken up, preached, dwelt upon, expounded in 
all its bearings, as one of the root-questions of life. It is 
really one of the hardest practical questions for many a 
man among us to answer : How shall I get well rid of these 
enormous sums which are accumulating every year ? 

Here are starving colleges — a half dozen of them — we 
answer, waiting to be lifted out of the rats, and preserve 
your name while they make noble use of your money 
for a thousand years. Here are our struggling theological 
schools trying to make bricks without straw, and condemn- 
ing their professors to double labor and to waste of life 
because they have no means to sustain them. Here are 
a score of cities, and every city of the score wants a cathedral 
as badly as city ever wanted anything, and around that ca- 
thedral they all want schools, orphan asylums, and a dozen 
things besides. Here are bishops out on the borders, fight- 
ing the devil at arm's length for elbow-room, and every man 
of them could use up one hundred thousand dollars in a 
month's time, and do it well, — creditably to themselves and 
creditably to you. There is no lack of opportunities. It is 
one of the very purposes for which Christ sent His Church : 
this, that she should always stand ready to teach Christians 
how to spend, and help them to spend well and freely. If a 
7* 



154 Copy. 

man has not found out that yet, he has a good deal to learn 
about the constitution and nature of the Church of God. 

There never was such a splendid opportunity for wise 
expenditure as is now possessed by Churchmen and Ameri- 
cans. We could sit down to-day and draw checks for one 
hundred thousand each for the next twelve hours steadily, 
and still leave room for some work of the same sort to- 
morrow. 

And we must come down to it, or up to it, some time. 
It is, at present, a shameless quibbling, this whole business 
of giving. It is simply disgraceful to look at our mission- 
ary work and our Church enterprises. No words can do 
the subject justice. When there are scores of incomes all 
over the country vastly beyond the entire expenditures of the 
Church for missions ; when there are incomes which amount 
to twice the annual revenue of all our colleges, seminaries, 
schools, and episcopal funds, not at all rare ; when there are 
those in our pews on Sunday, and at our altars even, whose 
private fortunes exceed the value of every church and par- 
sonage in the land, — it is certainly a very poor show that our 
Church work and extension presents. 

The clergy as a body are laboring, we dare say, and 
challenge contradiction, as no body of clergy have labored 
since the earliest days, with most primitive zeal, patience, 
and self-denial. They are only seeking out fields for fur- 
ther labor of the same sort. At least, as we know them, they 
fear no privations for the Master's cause. And yet never — 
to the shame of the laity be it spoken, and it is time some 
plain words were spoken on that matter — did any body of 
clergy, as a rule, minister to a people richer in all the means 
of indulgence, or more ready to use the means for that 
purpose. 

There must be a radical change in this matter, and per- 
haps there are faults on both sides to be amended The 
clergy may not have proclaimed a truth Certainly the laity 
have not acted up to any knowledge of the truth. 



FRUGALITY IN GOD'S SERVICE. 

THE Pope issued a huge bull, or something, lately against 
extravagance in dress, directed especially to the ladies. 
Sensible Pope ! All husbands and fathers should drop 
a " Peter's penny " in his poor-box, when next he sends it 
round, to help pay for that bull. We fear, however, that he 
will find his old motto, Non possumiis^ to be a true motto in 
this case. We have no notion that a Pope's bull '' runs " in 
a milliner's shop or a Magasin des modes either in Paris or 
New York. All the bellowings of the animal will, we fear, 
have no effect in the realms subject to the goddess Fashion. 
That region has not yet been converted to Christianity of 
even the Roman sort. Nevertheless, the good old Pope 
should receive credit for his excellent intentions He has 
done the best he could under the circumstances, and he 
deserves thanks. And on the whole, the oversight end 
correction of ladies' dresses is about as innocent an employ- 
ment as he can now engage in. Well would it have been 
for the world if many of his predecessors had confined 
their ambition to the same region, and had sought to exer- 
cise their infallible authority in so beneficial and innocent a 
manner Therefore, we are sorry to see one of our papers 
fall foul of the good Pius about this harmless business. That 
irreverent contemporary applied to him the old proverb, 
"Physician, heal thyself," and asked him how he — carried on 
men's shoulders, amid waving peacocks' feathers, all decked 
in scarlet skirts and embroidered capes, and glittering in 
gems from his huge three-banded cap down to his very toes, 
with rings on his fingers and chains round his neck, a gorge- 



15^ Copy. 

ous sight altogether, and the very triumph of the jeweller's 
and milliner's art — how he, in this sort of "get up," on his 
way to church, could have the face to rebuke the ladies for 
their comparatively dim splendors and their infinitesimal ex- 
pensiveness. And then it taunted him not only with his own 
gorgeousness, but with that of all his familiars and subordi- 
nates. It spoke of the splendor of the clergy, the brilliant 
purple of the cardinals, the general shinery and flash of all 
the occupants of the sanctuary, and hinted that all this was 
a poor example to set to the laywomen down in the dark and 
rather dismal nave. 

And then another contemporary quoted all this, and car- 
ried the thing a little farther, even away from the poor Pope 
and the gorgeous processionizing Avith which he comforted 
in the evil days his sad soul, and applied it to Protestant 
churches and Protestant clergymen, and especially to those 
unhappy people, "the Ritualists," of whom there are two or 
three we believe in the United States, and on whose devoted 
heads, therefore, everybody feels called upon to pour "pre- 
cious balms " ad libitum. 

It occurred to us, as we read the indignant et tu quoque 
of each of these papers, to ask whether the argument is 
sound. Is it an absurdity for the Pope, in his gorgeous 
trappings, to rebuke a peasant's wife for some bit of ex- 
travagance, or some small show in the matter of a ribbon 
or an earring ? Is it a contradiction between preaching 
and practice? Is one of our mildly "ritualistic" friends, 
because he wears a colored and embroidered stole, forever 
forbidden to denounce the extravagance of the ladies in a 
fashionable congregation, and incapacitated from warning 
them against vanity and worldliness ? Does a splendid 
church make it impossible to denounce the extravagance of 
the "palatial residence," and must the clergyman, who 
stands in a chancel made beautiful by costly stones and 
agate windows, be thereby made dumb to rebuke the luxury 
and self-indulgence of his wealthy parishioners } This 



Frugality i:: God's Service. I 57 

seemed to be the extent to which one carried the argument. 
And it seemed to us a very queer argument, when w^e looked 
at it. We are not concerned to defend the processionizing 
of the bishop of Rome, nor the doings of cardinals in the 
chancel of St. Peter's. We do not know the length of their 
red stockings, nor the breadth of brim of their red hats. 
Whether they are more or less gorgeous is neither here nor 
there. Neither are wx concerned to defend the fancies of 
our unknown friends, " the Ritualists." We do not in the 
least know what fancy they have at present which they 
would like us to defend, if we were anxious for employment. 
What we are concerned to say is, that the argument is one 
that will not answer, and one which is very dangerous in- 
deed. It proves altogether too much. And vre dislike to 
see even our worst enemy attacked with a clumsy and 
butcherly weapon. 

Is official splendor, is public pomp, in dress or ceremony, 
or in buildings for public uses, an argument for private lux- 
ury and extravagance ? Is the official who takes part in any 
public function where splendor and beauty are required there- 
by compelled to justify private extravagance and private 
show ? We unhesitatingly assert the negative. The mag- 
nificent public buildings, the splendid monuments of Rome, 
the temples, the forum, the baths for public uses, Avere built 
when the private life of her citizens was most frugal and 
simple. The same Vvvas the case in Athens, and all Grecian 
cities. There was lavish expenditure on public buildings, 
and the citizens, w4io built them for public and official uses, 
were content wdth humble private homes. The splendor of 
Roman triumphs was an official splendor. It vv^as held to 
consist, and did consist, with private plainness and simplic- 
ity. In the days of public virtue nothing vras considered 
too costly, too splendid, or too grand for public use or offi- 
cial function, nothing too plain and too frugal for the private 
life of the citizen. 

There is no connection v/hatever betv/een private personal 



158 Copy. 

expenditure and official or public splendor. As a matter of 
fact, the last has a tendency to displace the first. There is no 
country where public buildings are meaner, where official 
functions of all sorts are more sordid, than among ourselves. 
There is no people more self-indulgent privately, or who 
waste more on the individual. The self-indulgent, extrava- 
gant, and luxurious people, in private life, are those always 
who are content to let their public life be mean and cheap. 
It was while the Israelites dwelt in ceiled houses that the 
Ark of God dwelt in curtains. It was while their houses 
were ceiled with cedar and painted with vermilion that the 
house of God lay neglected and half ruined in dirt and de- 
cay. But if the argument is proved empty in civil matters, 
it is entirely a delusion and a snare when we come to apply 
it, as it w^as applied, to religious matters. 

We have the account of the dresses and ornaments of the 
Jewish priesthood as ordained by the Lord himself. We 
have an account, most minute and full, of the temple built 
with a kingdom's wealth, and accepted by God as the place 
of His own dwelling. Both were splendid beyond anything 
we know. The temple was a wonder for all the w^orld, — a 
glittering pile of polished marble roofed with gold, a cliff of 
snow and fire beneath the eastern sun. All that unbounded 
wealth could do, all that art could frame or fashion, was 
heaped with lavish hands on that wonderful house. 

And all the appointments of ornament and vestment were 
ipade to correspond. The service was one blaze of beauty 
and splendor, the offi^ciating priests were robed magnificently. 
Now all this was expressly appointed and sanctioned by God. 
Did He institute a temptation to luxury and extravagance, 
to fashion and show, in His own worship ? Was Solomon's 
Temple an inducement to every Jew to build himself a lux- 
urious house, and fill it with costly extravagances ? Wlien 
the people came up, according to the Lord's command, to 
worship, did they find in the priests' dresses, patterned by 
God Himself in the Mount, an argument for female or male 



Frugality in God's Service. 159 

foU}^ and waste in fashion's service? If the argument above 
mentioned is of any value, we must answer this, to our 
amazement, in the affirmative. 

The argument was carried so far by one of our friends 
that he used it to condemn costly churches, or costly ap- 
pointments in the churches, and thought that we should set 
an example of plainness and simplicity in our churches to 
this luxurious and misguided age. It reminded us of the 
way in which we heard a frugal gentleman, some time since, 
planning to exercise the virtue of economy in the coming 
year. • ^' He had been living altogether extravagantly. He 
must economize. He had, for instance, been paying fifty 
dollars a year pew-rent, when there were only himself and 
his wife. He was going to take another pew a little further 
back, but exactly as good, for thirty dollars, and that would 
save twenty dollars to begin with." 

The notion that a people living, as the people of the 
United States are, in the world's best pantry and store-room, 
and denying themselves nothing in the way of extravagances 
and luxuries in houses, furniture, dress, or table that can be 
obtained, are to be taught plainness and simplicity, and 
brought back to the lost virtues of frugality and self-denial, 
by having cheap and mean churches, could only have orig- 
inated among a people which produced our friend, whose 
first duty, in the exercise of a healthy economy, was felt to 
be the saving of twenty dollars a year in his pew-rent. 

There are some magnificent churches in Europe. Can- 
terbury and York Minsters, the groves of stone aisles in St. 
Peter's Abbey, Strasbourg and Cologne Cathedrals, the peo- 
pled pinnacles and roof of Milan's marble splendor, and the 
indescribable beauty and grace of Rouen churches,— all 
these, we suppose, led to luxury at home, to wastefulness 
and self-indulgence and flaunting vanity in their builders. 
We never heard that such was the case. The patient build- 
ers of these grand piles lived hard, Hved coarsely and plainly, 
as we have read the story, and built their patient, self-deny- 



1 60 Copy. 

ing lives into the stones of God's house, as it grew upward 
toward the heaven they sought faithfully and simply, if it 
were, in some things, mistakenly. We have never been ac- 
customed to connect the corruptions of European society 
with a passion for building cathedrals and adorning them 
splendidly. Indeed, the age that built them was an age of 
hard toil, and very little luxury. The ages of luxury were 
not, in Europe, the ages that spent thousands lavishly on 
those churches which shall stand as visions of beauty, and 
witnesses of faith and self-denial for all time. 

We certainly cannot attribute the luxury and indulgence 
of New York to the example of its splendid churches or its 
gorgeously-arrayed clergy. There is hardly a church in the 
city which is not surpassed, in size and beauty, by the ordi- 
nary parish church of a European village. Its private homes 
are, by the score, more costly, in building and furnishing, 
than its very finest churches. 

The same is true of New York's western sister and image, 
Chicago. It has not been led into luxury and show by the 
ill example of costly houses built in God's honor. That we 
can intelligently testify. It has been improving in church 
building of late, but it may yet improve very far before its 
churches will at all shame its private residences, or put its 
banks and business blocks out of countenance. 

On the whole, we do not think that national frugality is 
to be brought back by being frugal in our churches, or that 
the first duty, in the exercise of wise economy, is to become 
economical in our religion and saving in our pew-rents. We 
do not really think that a handsome altar-cloth is going to 
cultivate the taste for silken curtains and velvet canopies in 
private houses, nor the decent silver of the communion ves- 
sels to create an un ;atisfied longing for plate dinner-services 
at home. If any of our brethren have a fancy for a little 
embroidery on their surplices, or a trifle of fringe on their 
stoles, we think they may free their consciences from the 
horror of supposing they are tempting the maids and mat- 



Frugality in God's Service. l6l 

rons of their congregations to ruin their husbands and fath- 
ers by long milliners' bills, or deep debts at the dressmakers. 
And even poor old Pius, in the midst of all his waving pea- 
cocks' feathers, may still, we think, venture to rebuke, with 
a good conscience, the absurd female fashions of the day. 

On the other hand, we conceive the argument of these 
papers to be in the interests of private extravagance and 
self-indulgence, and, if it has any force at all, to be altogether 
used for selfishness and worldliness. For wealth is accumu- 
lating in these United States enormously. There are fortunes 
more than regal in them at present, and these fortunes are 
rapidly doubling. There are more milhonaires than in any 
population of the same numbers in the world ; and the dis- 
tribution of wealth and plenty below this is nowhere else in 
any comparison. This wealth must be used, and to save it 
from being used on the individual, and so misused, to the 
ruin of soul and body, and to the rotting out of the national 
life, we must awaken the public spirit, and the sense of re- 
sponsibility to the community. It will either be used for 
private luxury or public benefaction, and to use it for this 
last is to save it from being a curse to its owners and a curse 
to the land. 

Public uses, except such as promised to yield a money 
return, have been hitherto neglected. Hereafter, public uses 
which will yield no money return, which will be simply ad- 
ditions to the beauty and grace of life for the whole com- 
munity, must claim their rights at the hands of wealth. 

Public parks, public buildings, public baths, public libra- 
ries and art galleries, as costly and splendid as money can 
make them ; hospitals for the sick ; homes for the destitute ; 
institutions of learning and such like, must absorb the Vv^ealth, 
which, used for private ends, becomes a canker to the owner 
and a curse to the public, — the source of envy, hatred, ill- 
will, and covetousness, and the bitter opposition of class 
against class. And among these public uses churches will 
not be forgotten. The wealth that would be used in private 



1 62 Copy. 

luxury and lawless self-indulgence must be taught to trans- 
mute itself into piles of stone for the honor of God and the 
blessing of men. They cannot be too massive and grand, 
nor too costly and beautiful, in all their appointments. 

As patriots and as Christians, that is the outlook for de- 
liverance from the same ruin that will come on the land, as 
it has on all lands, when public munificence keeps not pace 
with the increase of wealth ; and when men learn frugality 
and economy in the service of God and their country, in 
order to save more for mammon-service, or the lusts' of the 
flesh. 

We consider no argument more unwise, more dangerous 
and short-sighted, than the argument which would persuade 
the American people to a sordid economy in their churches, 
or a mean parsimony in any other public use. Our rich men 
must hold their riches under the sense of responsibility to 
the whole community, or in this ^' fierce democracie " their 
riches and themselves will have a very rough time of it at 
last. 



WANTED, A CHURCH. 

IT is idle to sneer at humanitarianism, or to dwell on 
purity of doctrine, as if that were all. The Church that 
visits the sick, comforts the sorrowing, cares for the widow 
and the fatherless, and preaches the Gospel to the poor, is 
the Church which the world will confess to be the real Bride 
of Christ. We cannot wonder at its judgment. It has no 
better rule than the Lord's : " Ye shall know them by their 
fruits." The time has passed w^hen talk will answer. The 
Church that is merely a talking institution is, in this day, 
something of a nuisance. The Church that is a Avorking in- 
stitution is now called for. 

It is strange that, on the whole, there is a great deal of 
talk among us which is considered by sober-minded men 
poor chaffy stuff enough. How important is it what Mr. 
Smith's notions may be about justification by faith .^ How 
vital a thing is it that we should understand just what he 
considers the specific error in the doctrine of baptismal 
regeneration ? And how essential a thing it is, on the other 
hand, to understand just the color of the altar-cloth for the 
present season, and just the shade of the chasuble for the 
time of year. 

The world laughs, and we cannot blame it, at a Chris- 
tianity which has gone to quibbling and baby-play, w^ith a 
perishing world about it which it was sent to redeem. 

This country needs, just now, a Church that knows no 
distinction of persons ; that upholds the eternal righteous- 
ness of God equally to rich and poor; that rebukes vice 
and wrong w4th the voice of God ; that panders to no fash- 
ionable sin or vileness ; that testifies against a wicked world 



1 64 Copy 

with power; that speaks out God's threatenings fearlessly 
to an evil and adulterous world ; that gathers fustian jacket 
and broadcloth coat, hard fist and kid glove, equally before 
God's altar, and tells to both the same uncompromising 
story ; that with God's sternness has also God's great pity, 
and shields in loving arms, and gathers to a loving heart, all 
the wretched and all'the sorrowful ; that feeds the hungry 
and clothes the naked, and does her Master's work some- 
what as He did it when here incarnate. This country, we 
say, needs that sort of Church. It will accept it as the Cath- 
olic Church, whatever be its notions about justification by 
faith alone. It will accept it, be its clothing what it may, — 
scarlet chasuble or black coat. Who can blame it } The 
reality is the main thing. The practical world judges prac- 
tically, and it is at least right in this, since when the Catholic 
Church was overturning Roman paganism, and converting a 
heathen world, it got on very well with profound silence on 
several matters which, we are sorry to say, are, just now, 
taking up the time and energy of very good people among 
us, as if they were important matters indeed. 

Catholicity is not Calvinism. Catholicity is not dresses 
and genuflections. It is doing Christ's business in the world 
faithfully; and when once we get at that as a Church, with 
both hands, we will have no time for either the one matter 
or the other. That either subject is of any interest or im- 
portance now is so far a bad sign. May it soon be mended, 
and " I believe in the Catholic Church " become a reality 
and not a phrase. 



HINTS ABOUT GRAVESTONES. 

WE saw in a beautiful rural cemetery, the other day, 
an exquisite monument to a departed wife and 
mother, carefully railed about, and covered with glass. It 
is of no consequence to describe it here. It was, in its way, 
very beautiful and very costly. Some twenty thousand 
dollars, we believe, were put into it. It set us to considering. 
For what do men build monuments on graves ? For re- 
membrance, of course. Any child could tell us. They are 
built to keep the memory of the departed green, and, it may 
be, to indicate the respect in which they were held by the 
living. 

This being the purpose, it would seem that one require- 
ment in a monument is very distinctly indicated, — it ought to 
be durable ; and another one also, it ought to be in a public 
position, to be seen and -appreciated ; and still another, it 
ought to be in some way connected w4th the lives and doings 
of the living world, so that men, for many years, will re- 
member the name of the departed, and with love too, with 
reverence and gratitude. 

In view of these purposes in the building of monuments, 
the beautiful work of art above mentioned fails entirely. It 
will not last for any length of time worthy of a real monu- 
ment. When the husband dies, and the children of the 
family are scattered, say in fifty years, there will be no one 
who has any interest in taking care of it. Its glass cover 
will be broken. The effigy, so admirably carved in Italian 
marble, will become weather-stained, and in a period less 
than the life of man the whole monument will fail to suggest 
name or memory to any living creature. 



1 66 Copy. 

There are hundreds of such monuments, more or less 
costly, and more or less elaborate, built every year over the 
country, in its various cemeteries, — offerings of love and 
respect to the memory of the dead. And they are all failures 
in the very purposes for which monuments are built. They 
link themselves to no living interests beyond those of the 
immediate family or friends. And when those die or are 
scattered, they fall into the condition of the unmarked, 
moss-covered, common headstones, which cost a few dollars, 
and which their ostentation shames. There is nothing in 
them intrinsically worthy of note as productions- of art, 
because the cemeteries are filling up with the same style of 
stonework, and in half a century nothing short of a pyramid, 
or a Bunker Hill monument, will be noticed, for its own 
sake, in the wilderness of tombs. There will be also, in a 
few years, none living whose special and loving care these 
stones will be. They w411 be cared for by the coarse and 
common hand of the common gardener and weed-cutter, and 
will awaken no emotion and no memory in the mind of any 
man or woman. They utterly fail in meeting the purposes 
of the loving affection or profound reverence which erects 
them. They are only temporary demonstrations of those 
feelings, but a little more durable than the mourning dress 
and the crape on the hat. 

One often wonders that men with means to build such 
tombs as we have mentioned, over wife or child, mother or 
father, do not sit down and think of this thing as they would 
of others. We set aside here those who, in tomb building, 
are merely going on in the usual show and bluster and vanity 
of mere wealth. We are speaking of those in whom thought 
and taste, reflection, culture, and gentle affections, go hand 
in hand with liberal expenditure ; and we wonder that they 
fail to learn how to build monuments of their dead with any 
permanence or wisdom, for the ways are manifold, and the 
choice is various enough for all tastes. There are monu- 
ments which stand, practically, forever. A man may actually 



Hints About Gravestones. 167 

build one, at a reasonable cost, which will outlast the 
Pyramids. We are speaking in all sincerity and calmness ; a 
man may erect, for such a cost as we mentioned above, a 
monument that need not be put under glass, that will not, in 
a few years, be hidden in the corner of some weed-grown 
graveyard, unknown and unnoticed, but will live forever in 
the eyes of living men, to whom the name commemorated 
will be a familiar and meaning word, a name of gratitude 
and love to the end of time. 

The Rev. John Bampton, founder of the " Bampton 
Lectures," in England, built a monument such as we speak 
of. It will stand when the Pyramid of Cheops is torn down 
to build railroad culverts. The Bodleian Library will be 
Bodley's monument while the world stands. And so of 
thousands of such in the Old World." These are monuments 
that all the world sees and marks and reads. There are 
again thousands of others, founded ages ago, which perpetuate 
the memories of good men and women in their own parishes 
or cities as freshly to-day as at the hour they were erected. 
Yale College will be Yale's monument after empires have 
decayed. Hobart College will perpetuate the name of the 
great Bishop wdien General Grant's administration is a faint 
reminiscence of the past, and the Astor Library will be a 
firm-founded and grand monument when the Astor family is 
scattered to the winds, and not a man living to bear its 
founder's name. 

The beauty of these monuments is that they, every year, 
grow higher, and their foundations deepen and broaden with 
the circling moons. They are linked, too, with the lives of 
men forever. They are living monuments, seen and known 
of all men ; parts of the busy world and its purposes to the 
end of time ; monuments which the generations of men are 
pledged to guard and keep, which thousands, in every age, 
gather around in loving care, and which, being gifts to 
humanity, humanity will never see fail. 

We have let out the secret here of monument building, 



1 68 Copy. 

and we give it freely to those whose loving duty it is to build 
memorials for the honored dead, or whose wish it is to keep 
their ovvn memorials green, and their own names wreathed 
with blessings for evermore. 

The monument must be put into the care of some death- 
less body, — that is all. The sexton who digs graves for 
others will some day have one dug for himself. The gar- 
dener of the '' rural cemetery " is not immortal. The trustees 
of such an institution pass away. The city may run a street 
through it, or the State may give the ground for a railroad 
depot, before the man who builds a marble shaft on his lot 
in it has mouldered to dust. Granting it may remain filled 
with human bones, and interments in it be discontinued, it 
is, in a few years, a mere wilderness of marble, in which one 
shaft or headstone or tomb, more or less, among the million 
is utterly unmarked by the indifferent visitor. But there are 
institutions which are immortal ; which no convulsions de- 
stroy; which will see nations end and governments pass 
away ; which survive in all chances and changes ; which will 
last while civilization lasts, and remain while men remain. 
And the simple secret of everlasting monument building 
is to put the monument or memorial into the strong, loving, 
and living hands of an immortal institution. 

The man who builds a church (and twenty thousand 
dollars would build a good one in many a parish) has erected 
a monument which will be just as firm and well guarded five 
centuries from now as it is the day the cross is put upon 
the spire. There is a deathless organization, bound by the 
holiest and strongest bonds, to guard and keep it sacred. 
The man who endows a church in some neglected city ward 
with the same amount, has secured his memorv for all time, 
and has wreathed it with the gratitude of mankind. The 
man who endows a professorship or a lectureship, or who 
founds an institution of learning or of charity, has the satis- 
faction of knowing that his monument will remain high and 
deep-founded when every shaft in Greenwood has crumbled 



Hints About Gravestones. 169 

into dust. And it does not take much, after all, to build 
these monuments. As we say, twenty thousand dollars will 
secure the end. We will even undertake to invest the halt 
of that so that the donor's memorial shall remain to perpetual 
generations. Aye, even one twentieth of the sum can be so 
invested. There are scores of parishes in England where a 
smaller sum than even that, left that its income might be 
spent in some charitable dole of food or fire or clothing to 
the poor, has handed down through centuries the giver's 
name, and brought blessings on his memory from those ready 
to perish. 

We believe the time is coming when we are to pay, in 
this country, more heed to the building of monuments. It 
requires some thought and care, and we commend thought 
and care to those concerned. The desire to be remembered, 
and remembered well, is a natural desire. It is a commend- 
able desire, a desire which is a sort of prophecy of immortality 
and a longing for it. And it may be gratified just as easily 
as not. That the desire shows itself so much in mere osten- 
tatious stonework in rural cemeteries, is only proof how 
little thought sensible people give to this matter. The ever- 
increasing stonework they build, at such expense often, is 
a gratification, no doubt, to their own feelings, but it entirely 
fails of any other purpose. 

The man's name and memory who builds a modest church, 
or endows a professorship or a scholarship in some seminary 
or college, is secure, and will be kept and guarded as it 
would not be if a pyramid were built over his bones. 

Bind some immortal organization to guard your sepulchre, 
and your dust shall be reverenced, and blessings fall like 
rain upon your memory, when the very language of the men 
that name you and point out your memorial might be a 
strange tongue to you. 
8' 



I 



RICH MEN AND MONUMENTS. 

THE enterprising gentlemen who control the daily press, 
with that rare modesty and good taste for which they 
are so noted, have been gratifying the laudable curiosity of the 
community by telling everybody of late the amount of his 
neighbors' income. The publication has given rise to many 
and serious reflections, some pleasant and some otherwise. 

In looking over any of the lists, one is struck with the 
number of very wealthy men reported. In the city of Chicago 
the number with incomes over fifty thousand dollars is not 
few. Several go above one hundred thousand dollars, and 
some over a quarter of a million. There are several hun- 
dreds who pay taxes on incomes of various amounts above 
ten thousand dollars. These incomes are independent, it 
must be remembered, of a certain amount exempt, — of house 
rent or ownership, and of United States stocks, bank stocks, 
etc., which are taxed in gross. 

This reveals an accumulation of property, which, a few 
years since, would have been considered as marvellous in this 
country. Many of the incomes are princely. The revenue 
of many a nobleman, and even many a rei;];ning prince, of 
Continental Europe, sounds very small in comparison with 
the incomes of many of our merchants and bankers. And 
this state of things will not cease. Accumulations tend to go 
on accumulating. The snowball grows bigger the farther it 
is rolled. In Chicago the average income has doubled and 
trebled in a year. More and more will reports be returned 
of revenues, in the hands of private American gentlemen, 
which will compare with those of royalty itself. 



Rich Men and Monuments. I 7 1 

What shall be done with these enormous fortunes ? In 
other countries the question might be answered easily. An 
English merchant, with a duke's income, vv-ould found a fam- 
ily. The laws of property would lay that before him as the 
most natural and feasible disposition to make of his fortune. 
He would root himself into the soil by the purchase of an 
estate. He would ally himself by marriage with the historic 
families. He would be offered and accept a peerage. His 
broad acres would be entailed, and he would die with the 
satisfaction of knowing that, for centuries, his name, his 
house, his estate, would endure, and his representatives re- 
main in the land among its great men and its counsellors. 

The American merchant or banker has no such possibil- 
ity before him. He stands alone. He may have an income 
which many a king's revenue does not exceed, but he has no 
assurance that his favorite son may not die in an almshouse. 
The absence of the law of entail absolutely forbids the found- 
ing of a family by the holding of the soil. The absence of 
the law of primogeniture forbids the accumulation, in any 
shape, to be kept up for more than one or two generations. 
As a fact, American fortunes are doomed to be scattered. 
There is no other prospect before them. The father may 
gather ; the children and the grandchildren will make the 
heaps fly to the four winds, when their turn comes. With 
our existing laws there is no possibility for an American of 
the Englishman's hope of founding a family which shall be a 
power in the land. When the millionaire dies, his grasp on 
his millions dies with him, by the inexorable law of the stern 
democracy. His heirs sh?Jl have full power to dissipate and 
waste as shall seem to them good. 

One strong motive for accumulation is hereby removed. 
It is just as well. We are inclined to think that Americans 
need no more inducements to that undertaking than they 
now possess. We do not quarrel with the hard republican- 
ism of our laws. We trust they will never be changed in the 
respect mentioned. And yet the desire to link a man's 



i;^ Copy. 

name to the future, to root himself into the soil, and become 
a part of the land and ics life; the wish to be represented 
after he is gone, to leave those behind him who shall name 
hi3 name with pride, and recall his memory with honor ; the 
desire that the labor of his life shall not be dissipated, and 
the product of his industry, forethought, and skill be scattered 
by folly, vanity, and laziness ; this natural desire is one of 
the strongest motives to exertion among men. Few toil for 
the mere sake of the money they gather ; fewer still for the 
sake of the gratifications money will procure. The success- 
ful man of business, raking in his thousands, has tastes as 
frugal as the ploughman. His table and his dress are as 
simple and modest as those of his book-keeper. The Amer- 
ican business man has, as a rule, the prime trait of a true 
gentleman, — simplicity of taste and manner. 

The motive which spurs men onward is not the money 
they get, nor the good things, for themselves, which the 
money will buy. They may not be conscious themselves of 
what the motive is, but we are quite sure it is often a better 
and a higher one than others believe. We do not mean to 
say that our merchants and bankers and railroad princes are 
pure philanthropists, by any means. Kind-hearted, gener- 
ous men enough, they are not sentimentalists, they are not 
making money for themselves out of pure love for their 
neighbors. But w^e do say that the motives which guide 
them are better, often, than they get credit for. They are 
generally anything but sordid. Often they are anything but 
selfish. 

As a fact, we believe that the desire for distinction is the 
ruling motive, generally, among successful fortune-makers, 
as it is among successful men of other sorts. It may not be 
the higest motive, but it is certainly not the meanest which 
can actuate a man. The v/ish is to " be somebody ; " to 
have one's place recognized; to obtain men's regard; to 
stand in one's city or country as a man of influence and 
power; to do something which shall remain after the doer i? 



Rich Men and Monuments 173 

gone. Life is so short, man's hold on the v/orld so slight, 
the desire for life so strong, and the wish for permanence so 
great, that instinctively a man strives to project his person- 
ality beyond himself; to get some hold on the world and on 
his fellows ; to make a second self in the things he creates, 
which shall remain as his memorial when he himself is lost to 
mortal sight. The blind desire to add to life's security, to 
obtain permanency by linking one's self to the material 
world, is, we believe, one great motive for money-making, 
one strong desire with men who labor to accumulate beyond 
what reasonable wants require. 

As matters stand, there is positively no distinction so 
uncertain and unstable as that given by wealth. As Ameri- 
can laws and manners are, there is none so sure not to last. 
It is at best a merely personal matter. It dies with the pos- 
sessor. He cannot secure its continuance in his family. 
The house he lives in, the garden he has taken pleasure in, 
the very books and pictures in which he took delight, will be 
in the careless and indifferent hands of strangers before he 
is cold. He may have many sons, but his utmost care can- 
not assure him that one of his name, in fifty years, shall dwell 
in the house he has builded, or remain in the city where his 
fortune is gathered. His name may be honored for all that 
makes names honorable. In a score of years it may be a 
disgrace in the streets where his fair buildings are standing 
now. There is no possible foresight or skill by which he 
can mark his property so that it will bear his name if he 
leave it to the risk of common heirship. Moreover, in ninety- 
nine cases out of a hundred, he is himself " a son of the soil." 
He has made his own fortune. He started with nothing but 
industry, good sense, and pertinacious pluck. He will tell 
you that a fortune at the beginning would, most likely, have 
been his ruin. He knows scores of men who began with for- 
tunes when he did, who have gone to wreck. His sober judg- 
ment tells him that the money he leaves them will be as likely 
as not to ruin his children. Thrown on themselves, as he was, 



174 - Copy. 

they would rise to success. Burdened with a fortune, which 
takes away the motive to exertion, they will sink into imbe- 
cility. With no check on their absolute control of his estate 
afforded by the law, he secures its disappearance out of his 
family. 

The man of fortune in America is therefore " shut up " to 
one disposal of his thousands, if he desire to bind his mem- 
ory to them in perpetuity. There is only one method by 
which he can so use his property as to secure distinction and 
remembrance. The corporation never dies. We have that 
feature of law to fall back upon. Property can be entailed 
virtually on a corporation. It may be bound with any re- 
strictions. It may be secured by any checks. It may have 
any name put upon it. It is past all contingencies. The coun- 
try becomes responsible for its safe keeping. The law throws 
a triple shield around it. The courts guard it. The will of 
the first possessor shall be carried out, in its disposal, while 
the nation remains. His name and memory shall last for a 
thousand years. 

There are colleges to found, there are professorships to 
endow, there are libraries to establish, there are charities to 
organize, there are churches to build and schools to create, 
there are cathedrals in the quarries yet, there are a thousand 
ways by which our men of wealth may secure their memories 
and make their names an honor and a blessing to all time. 
Here are our American patents of nobility, ready for the 
claimants. The grandson is trained in the university where 
his grandfather's name is commemorated as one of the hon- 
ored founders. The far-away descendant v/orships in the 
grand cathedral that has borne his ancestor's name for cen- 
turies. In the ages to come the vast library shall be visited 
by the man who thinks, with a thrill of natural pride, '^ My 
ancestor founded this five hundred years ago." The whole 
land remains to be covered with memorials like these, Every 
city waits to have them built. The rich men of this gener- 
ation have the most splendid opportunity. They can build 



Rich Men and Monuments. 175 

monuments. — not in the foolish taste of the sentimental rural 
cemetery, that no soul, in fifty years, will visit or care for, but 
monuments in the crowded city ; grand monuments, towering 
to heaven ; monuments that men shall read and see and re- 
member while the world stands. 

Here and there they are doing it. Judge Packer is just 
founding a Polytechnic School in a beautiful village in 
Pennsylvania. Admiral Dupont has left a large fortune to 
found a charity for the orphans of United States sailors. 
The rising college of St. Stephen, at Annandale, is another 
enterprise to which a liberal member of the household is de- 
voting his means and time De Veaux College for orphans, 
at Suspension Bridge, is another well-built monument to an 
honored name. These, and such as these, are worthy rivals 
of those princely men who, ages ago, endowed those ancient 
institutions which, above all else, are the glory of England. 
Such vvork seems to belong to Churchmen especially. It is 
a sort of hereditary thing with them One reads that the 
Duke of Northumberland left his estate, the other day, 
charged with one million dollars for Church extension. So 
much for the duke. One reads also that Lee Guinness 
has just spent a million in the restoration of Dublin Cathe- 
dral. The plain merchant is no whit less a prince than he 
who bore the honors of the knightly Percys. 

We speak to the members of the American Church, 
and we say they have the most splendid opportunities. On 
all hands, our men of wealth have offers made them freely to 
make their names honored on the earth for all time. The 
distinctions of virtue and goodness and largest nobleness are 
theirs to" claim. They m-^v root their memories into the 
land as deeply as the granite foundations of the towers if they 
will. They may make those memories blessed among the 
best and noblest if they will. 

We have- only to say, in the close, that if any man has a 
desire so to use his wealth, he will be wise to see his purpose 
accomplished while he lives. Let him not leave a lawj.uit to 



176 Copy. 

squabbling heirs, as did Stephen Girard Let him not secure 
the failure of his purpose by leaving it to executors. Let 
him realize it himself, while he is here to see. Let him grat- 
ify himself with his act accomplished, with the sight of his 
own good done. He can be sure, then, that he has attained 
his end. If you design founding a college, found it now, 
while you are here to see. If you intend to build a cathe- 
dral, you have the right to bless your own eyes v/ith its faii 
proportions. ' That is the advantage of this sort of monument ; 
a man can build it while he is living, and he happy in his 
work. 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

IT is something curious that intellectual opposition to 
Christianity has always taken the form of Pantheism. 
The Neo-Platonism of Alexandria, which, for four centuries, 
was the only rival of the faith in human reason, was a Pan- 
theistic philosophy, and startlingly like our modern infi- 
delity, even to words and phrases. There is positively not 
an idea in Emerson or Parker which is not better expressed 
by those early infidels of Alexandria. There is not a phase 
which self-conceit has given to unbelief that may not be 
found among them. Even '' spirit-rappings," and the whole 
hierarchy of '' mediums," existed among them in quite as 
lively a style as they do in this year of grace. They had 
their '' trance-mediums," their 'Svriting-mediums," their 
^' revelations," their '' healing-mediums," the whole machinery 
of their juggling thaumaturgy, in perfect working order. 

Neo-Platonism was a caricature of the Christian faith. 
Modern infidelity is the same. It adopted Christian phrases. 
It stole Christian ideas. It cultivated a Christian dialect. 
Even so does our present unbelief. It admitted the excel- 
lences of Christianity. It professed to honor Christ as a 
revealer of truth and good. So does modern Pantheism. 
It talked quite piously, even when it denied the existence of 
God. So does its modern echo. It was perfectly willing 
to take Christianity, if only you would not ask it to take it as 
anything more than a set of notions. So is the transcendental- 
ism of Boston. It was ready to admit the truth of Chris- 
tianity, if only you asked it to confess it true as Buddhism 
or Brahminism was true. So, too, are our own " philoso- 



1 7^ Copy. 

pliers." In short, it vras Pantheism, Ukc the unbeUef of 
oiir own time. It honored Christianity as it honored Pa- 
ganism. It honored Christ as it honored Buddha or Zoro- 
aster. It admitted no faith, only a bundle of notions. It 
fought Christianity because Christianity demanded faith and 
submission, and proclaimed a certainty. It held that all 
religions were alike true, and, also, all alike false, and that 
"philosophy " was to sift them all, and gather out the wheat 
from the chaff. It was the perfect prototype of the foe w^ith 
which the Church has to contend to-day. There is nothing 
new in Pantheism. 

There are two forms into which it throws itself now, as 
there Vv^ere formerly. We have intellectual Pantheism and 
material Pantheism. The first is called, sometimes, "trans- 
cendentalism." The last is the so-called " positive philos- 
ophy " of Comte, Darwin, Buckle, and Spencer. 

Transcendentalism— intellectual Pantheism, that is — ap- 
peals to the fevv\ Material Pantheism, the positive philoso- 
phy, appeals to the many. The great mass of unbelief 
among us is founded on this "positive philosophy." There 
is something in its hard materialism which fits the thought of 
the time. There is that in its flippant pretence at explain- 
ing all things, and answering all questions, which commends 
it to an age engaged in physical problems and the task of 
mastering material nature. It is w^ell that Christians should 
know it, and be prepared to identify it. 

The " Positive Philosophy," then, sets out with the asser- 
tion that facts, and facts alone, are the subjects of science 
and reason. Men are to study facts and not guesses. They 
are to deal with things which are. They are to investigate 
and arrange the positive existing realities which surround 
them. Mere speculation, mere romancing, mere ingenious 
word-weaving, can find no place in any true philosophy. 
We are in a real universe, surrounded by real things and 
real laws. It is cur wisdom to know these realities of our 
place and these laws of the universe. We must therefore 



The Positive Philosophy. I 79 

deal with positive things. So far, every intelhgent Chris- 
tian is as much a positive philosopher as any man can be. 
In all this we are perfectly agreed. We do want realities, 
and not guesses. We want positive truth and positive law. 
We want to know the real facts of life and the universe. 
These, and these alone, are worth our thought and care. 
But what are these reaUties ? Here is where the Christain 
condemns the positive philosophy as shallow. It absolutely 
ignores the most fruitful realities of human nature and expe- 
rience. It puts aside a whole mass of powerful and real facts, 
which have worked and conquered on the earth in all time. 
It begs the whole question, and assumes that matter only is 
positive, and material facts the only facts for investigation. 
We look abroad over the world, and we see that, in all time, 
the world is full of facts which are above and beyond the 
senses, — facts which the eye cannot see, and the hand cannot 
handle, but which, nevertheless, are most real and most povv^- 
erful facts. We look into our own consciousness, and we 
make the same discovery. We find that in man is also a 
host of facts which are unknown to his senses, but which 
are most fruitful and controlling in his life. And the '^ Pos- 
itive Philosophy " absolutely refuses to count these facts. It 
will not admit them as subjects of investigation. It will not 
take them into notice at all. The whole mass of ideas and 
spiritual forces it utterly ignores. 

All this it may do if it will confine itself to its proper 
business. Even then we have no quarrel with it, if it will 
stay where it belongs. When Dr. Draper makes a chemical 
analysis or dissects a dead body, — when Lyell pounds rocks 
to pieces and collects specimens for his cabinet, — when Dar- 
win makes a microscopic investigation of a " monad," they 
are perfectly right in taking no note of anything but what 
they can see or touch. In the investigation of material 
things, in the discovery of physical laws, they pursue the 
right and only course. W"e are quite .prepared to admit that 
by that method they obtain real knowledge of material nat- 



1 80 Copy. 

lire, and that their conclusions are worthy of all regard. 
But when they leave that field, — when they go to other 
investigations, and take their small method with them, and 
insist that it is the only one, — when they apply their small 
six-inch rule to the great universe, seen and unseen, we can 
only deny their conclusions and laugh at their pretensions. 
Their positive philosophy then becomes the most stupid im- 
position upon reason, and the meanest atheism that ever 
caricatured and outraged the faith. And this is just what 
"Positive Philosophy" undertakes to do. It carries its 
chemistry and comparative anatomy out as the measure of 
the world. Because it finds no God in its retorts, and no 
soul in the cadaver under its dissecting knife, it assumes 
that there is no God and no soul anywhere. It finds ''mat- 
ter," and it finds "force," as it calls it, and sums up its rev- 
elation of wisdom to the world in the announcement that 
there is nothing in the universe but "matter and force." 

Buckle writes a history of civilization, and Draper feebly 
echoes him, and this is the fallacy in both, — that material 
things are the only things which touch humanity. They 
speak of positive facts, and they mean only physical facts. 
They take no account of the great array of facts which are 
not physical, and realities which are not material, which 
have moulded and guided, and do yet mould and guide 
men. Dr. Draper walks through the aisles of history and all 
the pantheons of the gods, a professor of physiology, pert 
and pedantic. He will tell you just how heroes and bards 
are produced, what physical laws create the reformer, what 
sort of food, climate, and soil is necessary for the saint, how 
you can " raise " men of genius, as farmers raise fat pigs. 
His wonderful physiology shall measure creation. Men are 
only the result of climate and food and drink and locomo- 
tion. Their whole doings — all their thoughts, feelings, and 
spiritual powers — can be explained, if you will only tell Dr. 
Draper what they have for dinner, and give him the ther- 
mometrical range of the country they inhabit. He knows, 



The Positive Philosophy. l8l 

when these and a few such Hke facts are given him, not 
only the shape of their ankles, the thickness of their skulls, 
and the angle of their jaws, but also gauges all their morals 
and their manners. And as men, physically, intellectually, 
and morally, are only the result of certain chemical " laws," 
the professor of physiology does not see any need of God 
either. He can manage the whole matter by his chemistry, 
and Jo without a creator or a governor very well. 

The flippant pretension of these men imposes on the 
unreasoning ; their array of learning and their exhibition 
of '' science " awe the unlearned. Because Dr. Draper is a 
really able man in his own department, because he does 
know chemistry and physiology, he imposes on the unedu- 
cated, as he imposes on himself, with the belief that he is a 
master of other knowledge, in which he is a simple sciolist. 
In his " Future Civil Polity of America " there is positively 
no learning which any man cannot make up in a day out of 
Apple ton's Cyclopaedia. Apart from his specialty he has 
^' crammed " for his book, and his learning is an undigested 
hodge-podge of general information. 

But here is the danger. The unthinking like this cheap 
philosophy that seems to explain everything, and make men 
learned without study ; and they are not reasoners enough 
to consider that, because a man knows all the bones in a 
human body, or can name every fibre in a fish's tail, he is 
not therefore an authority in matters about which he knows 
positively nothing. 

It is hardly necessary for us to point out the fallacies of 
this positive philosophy the moment it leaves its own field 
of physical investigation. We have only desired to state 
just what it is, and what we conceive the proper limits of its 
use and exercise. 

The querulous complaints of these ^'philosophers," that 
Christianity is opposed to them., are mere twaddle, — imbecile 
twaddle. Christians are as active as they in investigating 
nature. But we insist that there shall be ordinarv sense and 



l82 Copy. 

reason used by the highest philosopher. We insist on taking 
all the facts. We accept the positive principle, but we will 
not allow the philosophers to throw away the most powerful 
facts in all the world, because they cannot put them into the 
chemist's retort or dissect them on the table of a medical 
professor. 

When we look at the philosophy of history, we do not 
want Christianity ignored, — not because we are Christians 
only, but because we are philosophers. There is a fact — a 
plain, patent, powerful fact — which has changed empires, 
caused wars, made peace, created institutions, built thrones 
and dignities, changed the lives of men. We insist, as rea- 
soning human creatures, that no man shall argue us out of 
our senses, and persuade us that this great fact, flaming in the 
eyes and hearts of men for eighteen centuries, is no fact at 
all, and that Europe and America owe what they are to cli- 
mate and bread and butter, and nothing at all to that. We 
msist, as reasonable men, that no bread and meat theory 
will account for the Crusades, no physical law for our own' 
Revolution, no talk of climate and the angles of human 
noses for our own Civil War. 

These, and ten thousand facts like these, in the long his- 
tory of the world, w^ere produced by ideas, by unseen spirit- 
ual forces. As a fact, we find these unseen forces and ideas 
the most powerful and productive of all facts on earth. We 
do not deny the influence of climate and government and 
mode of life ; but we insist that these other influences, as 
positive facts, must find a place in any true philoE:ophy ; we 
declare that a philosophy which cannot face these facts, deal 
with them and find place for them, does not deserve the 
name. 

W^e reject the positive philosophy as not adequate to the 
facts of human life and experience. When it talks of man, 
it means only man's body. When it talks of the world, it 
means only matter. When it speaks of God, it means only 
force. It uses Christian words and phrases, and it uses 



The Pocitive Philosophy. 183 

them to deceive. It believes in no God apart from the ma- 
terial. The world is God, and God is the world. Matter 
and force are the only things that exist. It is thus material 
Pantheism, or atheism, rather; denying God and the vv^orld 
of spirits ; absolutely puts out of existence the invisible 
vrorld, because it is invisible. It believes in steam-engines 
and cotton-mills ; it does not believe in God. It believes 
in its dinner ; it does not believe in its soul. It recognizes 
its beef and pudding, but not its conscience. 

It claims to deal with facts, and begins by denying all those 
facts without which human life cannot be understood nor 
human history read. It commences to reason about man, 
and begins by ignoring all that makes man, all that is pecu- 
liar and exclusive to him in this world. 

The modern form into which material atheism has cast 
itself is the most insolent and pretentious, as well as the 
coarsest and meanest, of all its shapes. It only needs to be 
met and looked at to discover its pretence and conceit. 
We adm.it the skill of these men at their various trades or 
professions. We recognize them as respectable in their 
proper callings. But we insist they shall not carry " the 
shop" with them everywhere. They must not try to make us 
acknowledge their authority in matters where they are pro- 
foundly ignorant. The chemist can no more settle the ques- 
tions of the universe by his chemical ''laws," than the car- 
penter can measure it by his "rule" or inscribe it by his 
"compass." Above all, we refuse to accept, as anything 
more than pedantry and conceit, a philosophy which refuses 
to deal with the mightiest half of all the facts of human life 
and human nature, and which pretends to a " Philosophy of 
History," or a "Philosophy of the World," on a basis no 
deeper than the method of raising bullocks or fattening 
swine ! 



THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 

THE study of material facts, and the discovery of their 
relations, their causes and consequences, is a very 
important branch of human activity. It is pursued, at the 
present time, with much zeal and considerable success. But 
it is only one department of intellectual activity, and by no 
means the highest or the most important. It has no right 
to arrogate to itself the title of philosophy, nor to call itself 
solely science. Neither has it the right to claim, as it is 
trying to do, to be especially positive science, — a claim which 
many persons yield it on sight. It is engaged with one set 
of facts, the facts of the material world, and, in its domain, 
is useful and respectable. It is only contemptible and use- 
less when it leaves that domain, and undertakes to apply 
its conclusions to matters w^ith which physical laws have 
nothing to do. 

When a man begins to talk of science, we want to know 
what he means. Is it physical science .'^ If so, we know what 
to expect. It is the knowledge of material facts and their 
relations, as far as he and others can discover them. But 
when he undertakes, by this science, to explain the laws of 
the universe — the worlds and the aeons and the spiritual 
powers invisible — we humbly beg to be excused from listen- 
.ing to his talk. 

The attitude of the clergy and the metaphysicians (and 
all clergymen are metaphysicians in a degree, whether they 
know it or not) tovvard the naturalists is not one of enmity 
or objection. They recognize the naturalist's place and 
usefulness. They should help him all they can. As an 



The Scientific Spirit of the Age. 1 85 

important field of intellectual activity, material nature is 
interesting to them, and the knowledge of it falls necessarily 
Vv'ithin their interests, as the greater contains the less. But 
they may insist on the naturalist working under the limita- 
tions of his pursuit. There are " limits of religious thought," 
according to Dr. Mansel. There are certainly limits of 
material thought. They may insist that the utmost know^l- 
edge of chemistry cannot help us in discovering the nature 
of sin ; that no physiological dealing with sinews and arteries 
can discover the soul ; that the most perfect acquaintance 
with animals, from the oyster to the chimpanzee, cannot give 
us one ray of light on man, in the constitution which makes 
him man ; and that when any man fancies that the case is 
otherwise, and intrudes his chemistry, his physiology, or his 
talk about fauna and flora into the high realms of the 
spiritual, and undertakes to lay down the laws there which 
he has discovered or fancied rule below, he has committed 
high treason against science, and is, in that attempt, no 
matter how wise in his own department, a presumptuous 
sciolist. 

That the clergy and the philosophers should know 
enough of material knowledge to enable them to see its 
limits, and to insist on confining it to its own ground, is very 
necessary. But that they should blindly yield to the spirit 
of the age, or accept the extravagant claims of what calls 
itself positive philosophy, is merely to prepare the world for 
a reaction, which is sure to come against a deluding mate- 
rialism. And the complaint which real philosophers make 
of the naturalists is, that they do not confine themselves to 
the realm where their knowledge is respectable. It seems 
to be one of the consequences of material investigation, that 
it tends to make a man presumptuous and venturesome. 

Take Dr. Draper as an instance. He is an excellent 
chemist, we believe. He has done good service in the de- 
partment of chemistry, and is useful and respectable there. 
But as a disciple of Darwin he fancied he had found a lav/ 



1 86 Copy. 

in matter vv^hich would explain spirit ; so he set to work and 
WTOtc a book on the Civil Polity of America, in which he 
undertakes to explain, also, the growth of European civili- 
zation. It was just what might have been expected. It is 
the work of a chemist and a physiologist. He is wise on 
climate and development. But just think of a man writing 
on European civilization and its causes, and leaving out the 
Roman law. Dr. Draper is an authority in chemistry. In 
physiology he is considered, we believe, at least respectable. 
Writing on civilization, in ignorance of history, law, and 
religion — the spiritual sciences — his book is a disgrace to 
American thought. 

It is not opposition to science, it is not because Christi- 
anity is opposed to science, that educated and sensible 
Christians refuse to receive Dr. Draper and his kind into the 
realm into which they insist on intruding themselves, with 
their scalpels, retorts, and geologic hammers. That is their 
cry usually. Galileo is a stock example for them, and they 
are all Galileos if we do not bow down and acknowledge that, 
because they understand one thing, therefore they under- 
stand all things. Galileo was the discoverer of a mathe- 
matically demonstrable fact. There is not a Christian living 
that will not accept from Dr. Draper, or anybody else, a 
demonstrable fact, and thank him for it. What we object 
to is, calling his crude and half-sifted notions on philosophy 
history, and civilization " science." And in keeping the 
naturalists to their place, educated men need a weapon of 
which the naturalists are now ignorant. That weapon is 
logic. If the naturalists had received a training in that 
despised study, they would be more useful in their own de- 
partment, and would not need to be told its limits. But the 
misfortune is, that the increase of interest in material knowl- 
edge has led educators to sneer at logic and its concom- 
itants. 

It is a just complaint that the scientific men at present 
do not know how to deal with their facts. Educated in a 



The Scientific Spirit of the Age. 1 8/ 

one-sided way, dealing with one single department, they 
lack that breadth of culture which takes in a fact in all its 
relations, and while the fact itself may be indisputable, their 
conclusions from the fact are anything but logical or neces- 
sary. And, again, untrained in the sifting of evidence, they 
are continually admitting facts which are no facts, because 
they lack the skill to apply the tests necessary to confirm 
them. 

Take "the stone age," '^ the bronze age," and " the iron 
age," which a number of ''scientific " men in Europe would 
have us consider as things settled, as " science " demon- 
strated, namely, that for long ages men used stone tools and 
weapons ; that gradually they grew up to the use of bronze ; 
and that, in the lapse of countless ages, they discovered iron. 
We suppose there are large numbers of simple-minded people 
who really suppose this is all scientific fact, demonstrated 
and fixed as the Newtonian theory \z. They are imposed 
upon by a mass of mere and sheer assumption. The /ac/s 
are all there, no doubt. There are '"celts," or stone 
hatchets ; there are bronze knives and iron axes ; but do 
-the facts prove what " the savans " claim ? Is their lack 
of logic scientific truth ? Is it certain that their inferences 
are infallible ? Is it sure that the only way we can ac- 
count for these things is by supposing one ten thousand 
years when men used stone, and another ten thousand 
when the same men used bronze, and so on up to historic 
times ? Why, yesterday, in our garden, we picked up a 
" celt," an Indian flint hatchet, and a few feet from it the 
little axe we purchased for our tv\^elve-year old, who will 
be hacking, like all boys of his age. Must we infer that 
ourself, father, grandfather, etc., on up for ten thousand 
years, have been growing from the flint hatchet to the steel 
axe .-^ That is what the logical "savans" say. What fact 
says is, that on the ground on which we stand, the period 
between " the stone age " and " the iron age " was just 
nothing. The Indian and the white were on the ground 



1 88 Copy. 

together, flint arrow-head and " red jacket axe," only twenty 
years ago. 

Take again the finding of human remains in low de- 
posits. T\\t facts are, we doubt not, unquestionable. But 
the inferences. There, not observation, not knowledge, but 
the logically-trained intellect comes in. The inference is 
that men existed ages on ages before the dawn of recorded 
time, contemporary widi the rocks in which their bones 
were found. Is this inference correctly drawn } Is it ex- 
clusive of all other theories } Does it exhaust all possible 
explanations .f^ So we are told. This conclusion is jumped 
at, and we are told it is "science," that "science demon- 
strates it," etc. 

A few years ago two things occurred on the west coast of 
South America Avhich true science cannot ignore. In the 
earthquakes there several hundred people, with their houses 
in some cases, their tools and implements and clothing, were 
swallowed up, actually disappeared and sank into the earth. 
Suppose in digging, blasting, or quarrying, their remains were 
found next year, will it be " science " that they are the 
remains of people who lived in a high state of civilization, 
and wore boots and pantaloons and stove-pipe hats fifty 
thousand years before Pharoah, or when the geologist thinks 
the primitive rocks were formed.'^ That they may be found, 
that their remains may be brought to light for the wonder- 
ment of future savans and for their wise conclusiveness, is 
shown possible by the other thing which occurred in the 
same earthquake. An old cemetery of the Incas, which had 
sunk in a previous earthquake, was, in this last, heaved 
aloft again with all its dead to the light of day. The earth, 
that had swallowed the bones a hundred years ago, restored 
them. 

Take again the Darwinian theory, so-called. It is the 
fact that nature has provided that only the best types shall 
live. The sickly young of all animals, as a rule, die. The 
weak do not propagate their kind. The tendency, in a state 



The Scientific Spirit of the Age. 1 89 

of nature, is that the strong, only those fit to brave the rigors 
of dimate and the difficulties of existence, shall live. It is 
the fact also that, in accommodating themselves to climate, 
they yield, too, as well as resist. The climate modifies we 
say, or nature modifies itself to climate. The Arab horse is 
slender-limbed and thin -haired on the hot plains. The Shet- 
land pony is shaggy and thick-limbed and stunted in the 
bogs and rocks of the Isles and the Highlands. The wild 
cherry-tree, Cerasus Virginiana^ growing opposite our window, 
is thirty feet high. In Virginia it is fifty; in Rupert's Land 
it is a stunted shrub. These and such like are facts. But 
is Darwin's reasoning from them a fact too 1 Has he drawn 
conclusions which are as unassailable as the facts .^ And if 
we accept the facts, must we accept his theory, or be charged 
with opposition to science ? 

Darwin concludes from these facts and such like that all 
varieties of life, from the oyster to the man, have originated 
from this struggle of life with nature, and this tendency to 
preserve the best types, and let the lowest perish. It is simply 
denied that this is science at all. It is mere guess-work. We 
admit the facts, but say that the facts have not been treated 
scientifically or logically. The oyster in all cases is still the 
oyster. The horse in all lands is still the horse. The sheep 
is always sheep, and never goat. Good type or bad, high 
type or low, the man is everywhere the man, and never the 
chimpanzee nor the angel. Darwin has drawn an inference. 
There is not a fact to sustain his law. There is not a solitary 
case in which the law has worked. From the facts of changes 
in species he has inferred the creation oi genera. 

The name " Positive Science," which many concede to 
the materialists, and which they claim as the proper name 
for natural science, is, itself, the best specimen of their 
illogical assumptions. Positive knowledge is any knowledge 
which surely exists. It makes no difference how men get 
the knowledge, whether by the sense of smell or of hearing, 
of seeing or of touching, or whether they get it by any sense 



IQO Copy. 

at all. The thing that />, is a positive thing, and any true 
philosophy will take account of it and find place for it. 

But the materialists have confined the word solely to 
material knowledge. They insist on ignoring, in their 
philosophy, all facts which are not material. The result is 
such writing as Dr. Draper's on civilization ; climate and 
beef-steak, or pudding, explain everything. Natural feeling, 
law, religion, love, hate, justice, injustice, right or wrong, 
the great forces, as the historian and philosopher see, which 
have ruled and made the world, are set aside entirely in 
such a man*s theory of the world's history, and he never 
gets out of the smoke of his retort nor the smell of his 
dissecting room. 

It is this narrowness of the materialists against which 
thoughtful men are making complaint. They have arrayed 
themselves against all departments of knowledge except 
their own. They sneer at metaphysics, they despise his- 
tory, religion, and law. They have fancied they can explain 
everything by what they call " the laws of nature," and 
have intruded those laws into regions where other laws rule. 
And because they have been opposed, and sometimes un- 
intelligently opposed, they have put on the air of martyrs, 
and have complained of the intolerance of Christianity, and 
invoked Galileo. 

That we need to pay attention to what is absurdly enough 
called " Positive Science," we do not deny. We ought to 
attend to it so far as to see its limits and insist that it shall 
stay within them, and not become a mere delusion and blind 
cheat by forcing itself into the realm of the moral and 
spiritual sciences. And the materialists themselves need, if 
they are going to work to any purpose, to be trained in logic 
and analysis, and disciplined in real philosophy, that they 
may know where their science ends and where it begins to 
become nonsense and presumption. 

The chemist is doing the world good if he use his knowl- 
edge to find medicines for a human ill, or food for a human 



The Scientific Spirit of the Age. 19^ 

stomach. He is a presumptuous fool if he undertakes to tell 
us the chemical constituents of the soul, or to discover sin 
or righteousness, justice or injustice, in his crucible. Mr. 
Darwin is a useful man, devoting himself to improvement 
in sheep, or the method of getting a better breed of pigs or 
calves. Mr. Darwin, attempting to account for the existence 
of the human spirit by infinite improvements in the breed of 
oysters, is — we do not care to say what — but certainly is 
not scientific, for he is engaged in about as empty a dream 
as ever middle age mystic monk dreamed in his cell, though, 
albeit, the monk's dream was far loftier than his. 

Nay, natural science has invented the steam-engine, 
electric telegraph, the sewing-machine, and McCormick's 
reaper, and we feel much obliged to it. Therefore the 
materialists have presumed upon the world's good nature. 
They have begun to claim — those of them who never invented 
anything especially, not even a patent mouse-trap or a cath- 
artic pill — that they could have invented the universe, the 
Deity, and man. 

There is more than one sign that the world is getting 
sick of them, and rather disposed to question their preten- 
sions in these latter matters. 



THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE ILLUS- 

TRATED. 

WE have before us an illustration of the '' Scientific 
Spirit of the Age," so-called, in a pamphlet repub- 
lished in this country from the "Fortnightly Review," at the 
office of the " College Courant," New Haven. The pamphlet 
contains a lecture by Dr. T. H. Huxley, " On the Physical 
Basis of Life," and is well worth reading as a specimen of 
the strength and weakness of the merely natural philosopher. 

Dr. Huxley discovers a substance which he calls the 
physical basis of life, of which substance, he says, the scien- 
tific name is protoplasm. He finds it to consist in the hair 
of a nettle, of a " semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable gran- 
ules of extreme minuteness. . . . When viewed w4th a suffi- 
ciently high magnifying power, it is seen to be in a condition 
of unceasing activity." This protoplasm is also found in 
human blood. If a drop of blood be examined, under proper 
conditions, and by a sufficiently powerful glass, there will be 
found, amid the other constituents of the drop, " a small 
number of colorless corpuscles, which will be seen to ex- 
hibit a marvellous activity. . . . This substance is a mass of 
protoplasm." 

Hence Dr. Huxley goes on to argue that this substance, 
"protoplasm," exists in all plants, and in all animals, 
though it appears in the nettle as a " semi-fluid," and in the 
blood of a man as "colorless corpuscles." Therefore, also, 
" the nettle arises, as the man does, in a nucleated mass of 
protoplasm." What is this protoplasm.^ The lecturer tells 
us that " all protoplasm is proteinacious," which is a good 



The Scientific Spirit of the Age Illustrated. I93 

thing to know. And also that " protein matter is the white 
of an egg," and that therefore "all living matter is more or 
less albuminoid." It seems to us that there is a good deal 
of word here for the amount of idea, and that the discovery, 
after all, when one gets to it, is not so very new, and that 
to land us at last in the white of an egg as the origin of life 
is, as far as chickens go, an old story to hen-wives. But we 
do not want to be captious. Dr. Huxley kindly analyzes 
this wonderful protoplasm for us. It ought surely to consist 
of some extraordinary substance as yet unheard of. By 
no means. " All forms of protoplasm contain the four ele- 
ments, — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen." That is 
all. Analyze it, and you find these, and these only. But you 
cannot put them together again, so the Doctor is kind enough 
to inform us. You cannot make protoplasm. You may 
have all the substances which go to make it, but no possible 
chemistry will combine them into this wonderful substance, 
— the white of an egg. The hen only can do that. The 
philosopher gives it up ! 

The lecturer thought it worth while to assure his readers 
that he was quite satisfied that his lecture would be assailed, 
that his doctrine " would be denounced as gross and brutal 
materialism," etc., — bespeaking the martyr's crown before he 
had suffered martyrdom. We do not know that anybody 
has justified his sad forebodings. We certainly shall not. 
We are just as anxious to know all there is to know about 
"protoplasm," or "protein" or albumen," as Dr. Huxley 
would have us. If he has discovered anything new, we are 
delighted, and obliged to him. A man who ruins his eyes 
looking at the hairs of a nettle in a microscope, deserves well 
of his country, if he finds anything to repay his pains, and 
any knowledge of the nettle hair beyond what the world 
knew before. 

We have no quarrel at all with Dr. Huxley's facts. A 
real fact is a sacred thing, and must be so treated in all 
thoughtful discussion. But we do claim the right, and in the 
9 



194 Copy. 

interests of science, too, to examine the way in which Dr. 
Huxley, or any other man, deals with his facts. 

The Doctor argues, from the existence of this substance 
in all plants and animals, that life is identical in all. It 
does not take much thought to see that there is a fallacy 
here. The first substance on which life acts may be the 
same, and yet the life itself be very different. The horse 
and the man walk on the same path, but the horse and the man 
are not identical. If " protoplasm " be the substance which 
is first actuated by life, and be, therefore, present in all liv- 
ing organisms, animal and vegetable, it does not follow that 
the life acting in it in the vegetable, and the life acting 
in it in the animal, are one and the same. There is a 
confusion of terms in the argument. The Doctor asserts 
that the basis of life is the same in all, and then argues as 
if he had said the life is the same. 

But he seems to hold (he is not very clear on this) that 
protoplasm is life. He always finds it living. In the nettle, 
or in the drop of blood, it is always "expanding or contract- 
ing.'' That is, of course, till it ceases to do so ; till you boil 
the nettle or roast the joint, or till" it, in some way, dies, 
which will not be long if you cut down the nettle or kill the 
animal. 

It seems, we say, as if Dr. Huxley held that this proto- 
plasm is life itself. He calls it '*the matter of life,'' at all 
events. But can life die 1 If the microscopist, because he finds 
under his glass a substance — call it "protoplasm," or what 
not — " expanding and contracting in waves," calls that sub- 
stance life, shall not I, when I see my dog's legs expanding and 
contracting much more plainly, and certainly more vigorously, 
call Jowler's legs life 7 The microscope may convince me 
that protoplasm is alive, just as my eyes, without it, convince 
me that the dog is alive, or the oyster, or the rose-bush ; but 
my microscope does not reason. It shows me the fact, and 
leaves me to reason ; and it is certainly curious reasoning 
that confounds life with the thing that lives. 



The Scientific Spirit of the Age Illustrated. 195 

We have no quarrel with the "scientists," as the pet 
name goes, in their own sphere. Our objection is, that they 
insist on carrying their chemistry and microscopy into regions 
where neither applies. Dr. Huxley does not do this nearly 
so much as half-learned disciples of his will. Nevertheless, 
he, too, is not clear of the presumption. For to what, after 
all, does the thing amount, in settling any question which 
interests man in his higher interests ? What human puzzle 
does it explain } Where does it rise any nearer the region of 
the affections, the conscience, and the will, than any physio- 
logical theory of the past ? 

Grant that there is a substance " expanding and contract- 
ing," and so inferred to be living in all bodies ; grant that it 
is " the matter of life," that it is continually wasted and con- 
tinually renewed, that it is no prime element, but a chemi- 
cally resolvable compound (and this is all the discovery Dr. 
Huxley makes), how on earth does this conclusion follow 
from all that.'^ "Why trouble ourselves about matters 
(merely spiritual ' matters ') of which, however important they 
may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing ? " 

As far as our limited knowledge of physiology goes, we 
cannot see that the word " protoplasm " explains anything 
which was unexplained before. That vegetables take sub- 
stance from soil, rain, air, and light, which goes to support 
animals, is an old piece of knowledge which scarcely can 
be called science. And yet that is all Dr. Huxley tells us, 
though in sounding phrase and with abundance of technical- 
ity. He tells us that " the animal cannot manufacture his 
own protoplasm. . . . He must take it from some other ani- 
mal, or some plant." In English, this amounts to saying that 
animals cannot live on air, water, charcoal, and flint, which 
is a thing most farmers that we have met understand quite 
well. " But with a due supply of such materials, many a 
plant will maintain itself in vigor," says the Doctor, and 
" manufacture protoplasm " in quantities enormous. This, 
also, is no news on the prairies. Neither is the other solemn 



196 Copy. 

announcement, — " Plants are the accumulators of the power 
which animals distribute and disperse." The pork brought 
to market in Milwaukee or Chicago, the most unlettered 
drover understands quite as well as Dr. Huxley, was origi- 
nally, for the most part, corn. The corn " accumulated the 
power " which the drover is now driving to market, in inno- 
cence of any suspicion that he is a deep philosopher when 
he throws the yellow ears among the herd. Is the Doctor 
a deep philosopher because what the drover calls pork he 
calls protoplasm ? 

That plants convert the inorganic matter of the universe 
into organic matter, by a vital power in the plant to do so ; 
that they take dead matter and make it live, with the life of 
the vegetable ; and that plants, in their turn, support the 
animal life of the universe ; that the matter of the plant is, 
in large degree, converted into the matter of the animal, is a 
thing so well known that it was hardly worth a solemn sci- 
entific lecture to prove. That the life of the plant does not 
become the life of the animal is also as well known, inasmuch 
as the plant life is destroyed, and its organization dissolved 
before any part of it is assimilated with the animal. The 
matter, which the plant first forms and which the animal 
afterward takes from the plant, may be called by any name 
a man pleases ; any part of it may be called the " matter of 
life," the " basis of life," the " protoplasm," but manifestly we 
have not solved yet the first problem about the nature of life 
itself. Why does the " protoplasm " become, in the one case 
an oyster, in the other a man ? If it be the same in both 
cases, under our microscope, whence come thought, reflection, 
conscience, reason, will, in one mass of protoplasm, and none 
in another mass of precisely the same material. Why does 
the oyster convert protoplasm into oyster, and the man 
convert the same into Iliads and Hamlets ? 

After all, the minutest microscopy only tells us the old 
story that man is dust and ashes, — the worm's brother. 
Science has not gone one inch beyond Revelation in declar- 



The Scientific Spirit of the Age Illustrated. 197 

ing our alliance with the meanest thing that crawls, and 
that "the image of God," as far as microscopy, physiology, 
and chemistry can examine him, is dust, was taken out of 
dust, and unto dust shall return. That his protoplasm, the 
substance in which his Hfe first shows itself, and which may 
constitute his animal vitality, is the same in kind with that 
of all organic things on earth down to the lichen on the wall, 
is a knowledge as old as humanity, and we really cannot see 
how the restating it in new terms is going to explain, in the 
slightest, the question of the difference between the lichen and 
the man. A certain amount of the same elements make 
both. Under certain conditions the lichen will turn into 
man — physical man, namely, when boiled in milk, as they 
serve it in Iceland, and eaten by the man. Dr. Huxley says 
there is protoplasm in each. Very well. Call it what you 
will. But why is one only lichen, and why does the other 
deliver scientific lectures in Edinburgh } 

Names confuse us at all times. They are will-o'-the- 
wisps to philosophers. It is so tempting to think that when 
you have invented a name you have explained a mystery, 
that it is no wonder so many succumb to the temptation. 
That all matter is the same in our crucibles, has not con- 
vinced the world that Shakespeares and oysters are the same. 
Underneath the whole material examination are found 
to be the old questions which no examination of mere matter 
can solve. We do not think that Dr. Huxley's protoplasm 
comes any nearer the solution of any one of these questions 
than any name of any other Doctor before him. 

But we are not writing about his nomenclature as the 
purpose of this paper. We rather take his lecture as an illus- 
tration of the narrowness of the natural philosophers. They 
are apt to make their specialty, whatever it be, the only pur- 
suit of importance in the world. They undertake to explain 
all things in heaven and earth by that specialty. Now, it is 
the bane of specialties that they dwarf. The chemist becomes 
a mere chemist; the anatomist tends to become a mere 



198 Copy. 

anatomist. A man gets to undervalue all knowledge which 
does not root itself in his own pursuit. He sneers at other 
people as dreamers or dotards, because they imagine that 
any facts or principles exist outside his department. 

This is our complaint against the naturalists. They are 
becoming insufferable in their conceit and intolerance. The 
complaint is justified by this short lecture. 

Dr. Huxley goes on and delivers himself, with what skill 
and knowledge he may, about protoplasm. We make no 
complaint. He tells us what his microscope has revealed, 
and we are obliged to him for his trouble. But when he 
closes by informing us that his pursuits are the only ones of 
any consequence to man ; that they, and they alone, reveal 
any sure knowledge and any certain science ; and that to 
attend to the questions and interests which, in all ages, are 
the great and absorbing ones for man, is mere folly and non- 
sense ; then we are indignant, and consider Dr. Huxley, with 
all his microscopic skill, a very poor philosopher indeed. 

Thus he draws his conclusion : 

" Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why 
trouble ourselves about matters of which, however import- 
ant they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing ? 
We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and 
the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the 
little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and 
somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To 
do this effectually, it is necessary to be possessed of only two 
beliefs : the first, that the order of nature is attainable by our 
faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the 
second, that our volition counts for something as a condi- 
tion of the course of events." 

That is to say, " we can know nothing '' except about 
what Dr. Huxley can tell us. 

In the first place, it is clear that we do " trouble our- 
selves " about other matters ; that men always have so 
troubled themselves. Dr. Huxley asks " why,'^ and appears 



The Scientific Spirit of the Age Illustrated. 199 

to be unaware that his question opens up the whole world of 
thought in theology and metaphysics at which he, quoting 
David Hume, has just sneered. 

It is a fact that men do so trouble themselves. That is 
a part of positive science ; a fact learned from the senses, 
from seeing, and also from consciousness. Why they trouble 
themselves is a branch of human inquiry. To understand 
the why has been the aim and search of the largest brains on 
earth. Dr. Huxley does not find the why under his glass. 
" Protoplasm " does not explain the fact. He therefore con- 
cludes it is unexplainable. Is that philosophical ? Or is 
this fact of human nature less worthy of an explanation than 
the other fact that protoplasm exists in a blood drop ? 

There is our complaint about the materialists, plainly 
illustrated. There is why we cannot call them philosophers, 
but only specialists. They meet a fact of human nature 
which their specialty cannot explain, which it has no use for, 
and they insist it is not worth while to explain it, and a mere 
waste of time to study it. Whether man troubled himself 
about these important matters or not, it is evident he would 
have just the same kind of protoplasm ; and as protoplasm 
is what Dr. Huxley is after, he whistles the useless fact 
down the wind. Not content with telling us that we have 
no business to consider facts which are out of his line, he 
goes on to dogmatize himself on those important matters 
which he will not let the rest of us consider. He tells us just 
what beliefs are necessary — only two — to effectually enable 
us to do our duty. He plunges, head first, into the very met- 
aphysics and theology he condemns. After having instructed 
us about protoplasm, he proceeds to deliver us a Gospel. 
We cannot help saying that there appears to us great ignor- 
ance of the whole matter he talks about here, and the con- 
ceit of a mere sciolist. The beliefs which are necessary to 
effectually enable a man to do his plain duty in this world 
are never found in a crucible. The philosophers and theolo- 
gians have been discussing them for several hundred years. 



200 ~^ Copy. 

What is our plain duty ? Where did Dr. Huxley find 
that it is our " plain duty to try to make a little corner of 
the earth a little less miserable." Did he find that fact under 
a glass ? Did he discover it in any combination of protoplasm 
or albumen ? 

The true philosopher must recognize all facts. He must 
admit them all as subjects of investigation; as equally pos- 
itive, equally real, equally scientific. He must investigate 
them in their own sphere, and must understand that if divin- 
ity does not explain albumenoids, neither do albumenoids 
explain" divinity. 

Man consists, the body of him at least, of certain mate- 
rials which Dr. Huxley busies himself in examining, particu- 
larly that material, protoplasm. But man just as certainly 
troubles himself about such important matters as plain duty, 
beliefs, justice, mercy, faith, God, the future life, etc. ; and 
the Doctor must allow other men to examine that fact, and 
try to see its relations to other facts, its meaning and pur- 
pose, and must admit that they are going on fact in doing so, 
on positive science, on things known, or he is unworthy the 
name of philosopher. And when he has explained to them 
that " the contractions and expansions of protoplasmic mat- 
ter " make the nettle-leaf green, he must be patient with 
them if they decline to conclude that it is also " the contrac- 
tions and expansions " of the same matter which teaches a 
man plain duty, and makes him serve God and do justice 
and mercy to man. They may accept the protoplasm, but 
he must bear with them if they decline the logic. 



CATHOLIC AND PRIMITIVE. 

THE word " Catholic " and " Primitive " are used very 
frequently, and, we must say, very carelessly. They 
both need defining before they convey any definite idea. An 
esteemed friend, in writing to us the other day, mentioned 
some custom as primitive, and shortly after as catholic, 
which custom certainly had no existence earlier than the 
sixth century. We find people continually quoting men with 
Latin and Greek terminations to their names, as primitive or 
catholic witnesses, who are too late, by several hundred 
years, to be either the one or the other. It is necessary to 
remember that because a man's name ends in us or ius^ he is 
not therefore, ex officio^ a Father of the Church ; nor are his 
notions necessarily catholic doctrine. 

A man named Eutychius, Bishop of Alexandria, who died 
in the year nine hundred and fifty, has actually been quoted 
as authority for the amazing statement, that, in the second 
century, presbyters in Alexandria ordained. The man's 
name ends in ius^ therefore he is as good authority, as if he 
knew something about the matter. It never appears to have 
occurred to those who cite Eutychius, that he lived eight 
hundred years too late to be a credible witness. In the same 
way, we find councils of the fifth, sixth, or seventh centuries, 
or even of a later date, when the Church was enslaved by 
the State, and corruptions and ignorance were thick within 
her, cited as establising primitive and catholic observances 
and worship. 

It is clear that the time has come when vagueness will 
no longer answer. Assertions will be sifted. Authorities 



202 Copy. 

will be demanded. When men talk of primitive custom, we 
shall be obliged to ask them to state what they mean. When 
they write about catholic worship, we shall insist on asking 
whether they mean third century worship or seventh <:en- 
tury worship. 

The growth of corruptions and superstitions in the Chris- 
tian Church was very rapid after the fourth century ; and 
it is very easy to find ancient precedent, and early precedent, 
for customs and observances which are anything but edify- 
ing or scriptural. 

A thing may be quite early without being primitive, and 
quite general without being catholic. When we find these 
terms applied to some corruption of the seventh century, or 
some grosser growth of the eleventh or twelfth, we must re- 
call men to the meaning of language, and insist that they 
call things by right names. 

Catholic is not applied to space alone. A catholic doc- 
trine is not a doctrine merely held universally to-day, or 
universally yesterday, or even universally for a hundred or 
a thousand years last past. A doctrine may be taught with 
scarcely a dissenting voice (we can suppose such a thing pos- 
sible) for ten centuries, and it may not be, in any century of 
the ten, nor at the end of them all, a catholic doctrine. Trans- 
substantiation was taught in its full scholastic complete- 
ness, universally, for centuries, in the West at least ; and yet 
it is not and never was a catholic doctrine. 

For catholic embraces time as well as space. The Church 
Catholic is the Church of all the past as well as of all the 
present. It embraces all the faithful who have ever lived, 
from the day of Pentecost until now. Catholic doctrine is 
the doctrine of that Church. Is is as old and as wide as the 
Church herself. Whatever, therefore, claims to be catholic, 
must be able to show its title — not merely by proving that 
it is universal now, or was universal in the tenth century, or 
even in the fourth, but by proving its universality in the 
first, the second, and the third as well. It must prove its cath- 



Catholic and Primitive. 203 

olicity in time as well as in space. It must have been held 
by the millions on millions who have crossed the flood, as 
well as by the fewer millions who have to pass it still. That 
is catholic, that is to say, which has been held always as well 
as in all places. The test is very easily applied. Where 
men speak recklessly of catholic customs, or usages, or wor- 
ship, we must give them to understand that they are bound 
to show that their custom, usage, or worship has existed 
from the very first in the Christian Church, at least by ra- 
tional inference We insist that they shall go up to the first 
century, and show us good grounds to believe their usage 
or custom to have been there If they cannot do this, their 
custom or usage may be good or bad, but it assuredly is not 
catholic. 

Neither is it primitive. For, as we have seen, catholic 
contains primitive, as the greater contains the less. That 
which is primitive must have existed in the Churches of the 
Apostles, under their living eyes. It will not do to show 
that it began in the second century, or in the third. In such 
case, it is one hundred or two hundred years too young to 
be primitive, and consequently to be catholic. It may be, 
then, very venerable ; but it is, still, not what we mean when 
we talk about things that are primitive. 

In the long contest with Rome, these things were well 
understood and defined. They need to be so still. And, 
therefore, we need to protest against the reckless misuse of 
language, which is common with some advocates of novel- 
ties among ourselves at present. They may not intend the 
result ; but, by the confusion they introduce into the minds of 
the unlearned, they are doing Rome's work, and giving up 
the ground of the reformers. 

Talking about things as catholic which are found only 
in ages when corruptions had overrun the Church, and call- 
ing things primitive which had no existence till the fifth or 
sixth centuries at least, is treason against the Church, as well 
as against sound learning. 



204 Copy. 

There is nothing clearer in the story of the Church than 
the fact of the rapid corruption which followed the establish- 
ment of Christianity in place of the national paganism. Pic- 
tures condemned in the beginning of the fourth century, and 
their presence in churches forbidden (Council of Eliberis, 
305), are introduced in the fifth, and actually worshipped, as 
appears from Gregory the Great, in the sixth. 

Lighted candles — unheard of, except to see by, and whose 
use is condemned for any other purpose by the same coun- 
cil and by St, Jerome — are used superstitiously in worship, 
within a century. It is the same with incense, introduced 
at first for sanitary reasons, to fumigate and disinfect the 
close crypts or catacombs, where the early Christians wor- 
shipped. Crosses on altars, too — unheard of for the first 
three or four hundred years — are common in the fifth age. 
So also with relics. They are decently buried in the begin- 
ning of the fourth century ; they are eagerly sought for at its 
close ; and within a while are superstitiously reverenced, 
and finally worshipped. The list might be indefinitely pro- 
longed. These are mentioned to show the rapid deteriora- 
tion of the Church in those very early centuries, after the 
primitive days. 

It is, therefore, very necessary to look to dates before we 
accept things recommended to us by eager but not too 
learned brethren as being primitive or catholic. Things utter- 
ly distinct must not be confounded, in the rash style which 
is too much the fashion. When customs or observances, un- 
known to the Church, are advocated as true catholic wor- 
ship, or as primitive ritual, we must be careful to inquire if 
they are any more catholic than transubstantiation, or any 
more primitive than pictures or incense. 



IMAGE WORSHIP. 

A WRITER upon Romish saint worship says : " Much^ 
undoubtedly, may be said in behalf of the Roman 
veneration of holy images, relics, and the like, as having their 
root in a natural instinct of the human heart — the same in- 
stinct that makes us kiss the miniature of a beloved person 
and wear it next our heart, and which makes precious to us 
any memento of those we have loved and lost." 

In this sentence the writer states fairly the common 
argument of Romish books and speeches for the reverence 
or "worship" that Church jDays to " holy " images. The 
plausible priest or lecturer, addressing his '' Protestant breth- 
ren," reminds them that they venerate the pictures of a dead 
father or mother ; that a mother will kiss, with passionate 
love and sorrow, the picture or the lock of hair of a lost 
child ; that any little memento of a dear friend gone is cher- 
ished as a thing of priceless value ; that a whole nation hon- 
ors the images of its benefactors ; that, in our own land, the 
pictures and relics of Washington are considered almost sa- 
cred (though matter-of-fact Americans do not kiss them), 
and that an old French soldier is moved to the deepest emo- 
tions at a picture or a relic of Napoleon (and being an 
excitable Gaul, and not a hard-headed Englishman or Amer- 
ican, will perhaps kiss it), and that all this comes from a deep 
instinct of human nature. 

This being so, how far more reasonable is it, the plausi- 
ble Roman ^' brother " goes on to argue, that Christians should 
reverence, and kneel before, and pray through at least, and 
kiss, and otherwise '* worship " the holy images of their Lord 
and His mother and the saints ? 



206 Copy. 

It is generally considered a very triumphant argument. 
We have read it where the writer evidently thought he had 
settled the matter. We have heard it delivered with an air 
as if the speaker felt there was nothing more to be said, — 
that the thing was unanswerable. " You will reverence the 
picture of your father. You blame us, and charge us with 
idolatry, because we reverence the picture of Christ. You 
will kiss the miniature of the departed mother you loved, 
and yet charge us with sin because we do the same to 
the picture of the Blessed Virgin, our mother." It is 
plausible. To be sure, the cases are not exactly parallel. 
The analogy only partly holds. One might reverence, or 
even kiss, a saint's picture ; but the saying one's prayers to it, 
or through it, or by it — in short, the kneeling and worship- 
ping before it, explain it as the Romanist may — is by no means 
the same thing. But this is not the place where the plausi- 
ble argument of our Romish brethren breaks down. It is just 
here. The argument is, " You reverence the picture of your 
father, and all men instinctively consider that right. There- 
fore, you should, with greater reason, reverence the picture of 
your Saviour, and all men should consider that right. You 
prize, secondly, the likeness of your mother. With more 
reason, surely, are you thereby bound to venerate, even to 
worship in a way, the picture of the Holy Mary." 

Suppose we admit the force of the argument.^ We then 
say to our Romish persuasive brethren : ^' Please show us a 
picture of either one or the other, that we may venerate it." 
The difficulty over which plausibility slips so easily, and 
says nothing, is that there are no pictures of our Lord and 
His mother, or of the saints, to venerate. Our Romish friend 
says nothing about that. He knows his business. He slips 
right over the lack that makes his plausible argument non- 
sense. 

We honestly couicss that we could not help reverencing 
a picture of our Lord. We believe no Christian man 
could avoid it or would tr}^ to. If a picture of Jesus Christ 



Image Worship. 20/ 

were in the possession of any Christian nation, that nation, 
we beUeve, would guard it as its chiefest treasure. It would 
build a temple for it more magnificent than anything yet 
erected on this earth. Christian men from all lands would 
make pilgrimage to gaze on that sacred picture. They would 
come with awe and yearning love and reverence. They 
would pray before that picture, possibly, as they never could 
pray anywhere else. They would frame it in gold and adorn 
it with jewels. They would keep watch and ward over it by 
night and day to guard it from loss or injury. All splendors 
would surround it, and all love and reverence would keep 
vigil before it age on age. Even a picture of the Virgin, or 
St. Paul, or St. Peter, or St. John, would be guarded, in some 
degree, in the same way, and reverenced by all men. Not 
indeed as a picture of our blessed Lord would be, but still 
with measureless love and veneration. 

We walked a while since through a Romish cathedral. 
There were various little altars about the sides, and some 
confessional boxes. There were a number of " holy pictures " 
hanging over each. We all know what they are. Hideous 
lithographic daubs, worth ten cents apiece, possibly, — rep- 
resenting the impossible features of a being that could not 
be man nor woman, carrying outside its breast a red heart, 
such ks one sees on cheap valentines, with flames issuing from 
it, — the whole thing disgusting and coarse beyond expression. 
These " sacred pictures " we know all about. The ugly 
things hang in the windows of Romish book-shops with 
other " holy merchandise," beads, crucifixes, etc. They 
hang in the houses of our Roman Catholic brethren, and 
they hang in their churches. And we are asked to call these 
caricatures, these utterly absurd abortions of taste and art, 
pictures of our Lord, and to reverence them. 

Just revert to the argument. A man reverences by natural 
instinct the picture of his mother. Therefore he is to fall 
into ecstacies over a ten-cent lithograph of some imaginary 
female which his Roman Catholic friend chooses to label 



208 Copy. 

with his mother's name. Of course he does not become ecs- 
tatic. He only wonders that the Romish friend is so little 
acquainted with the common instincts of humanity as to be 
surprised that he considers himself insulted, and one whose 
memory he reverences caricatured vilely. But put it stronger. 
A man, by natural action of his affections, loves to look upon 
the picture of his father whom he reverenced in life. He 
has no picture. He never had. So he goes out and buys 
a fancy picture of Julius Caesar, or Hannibal, or Napoleon 
crossing the Alps, from some dealer, hangs that up in his 
study, and reverences and salutes that. 

The question of worshipping pictures, or reverencing 
them, if our Romish friends prefer it, has been settled by 
the Lord. He left no picture. We have not a hint as to a 
feature of his face, except in the prophetic vision of Isaiah : 
" He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see 
him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." 

Their talk is utterly idle. It presupposes that which does 
not exist, — a picture to reverence. The conventional pictures 
— " Ecce Homos " and the rest — are the fancies of the makers. 
They all long to express what nothing can express, the idea 
of a man who was God. They all fail miserably, even when 
the work of men of the highest genius. They degrade the 
Lord in the mind of the worshipper. And just here we come 
upon the very reason why images are forbidden in the law 
of God. They cannot express the idea of the Divinity. 
They degrade it in the human mind " Hallowed be thy 
Name," is the petition in the Lord's Prayer, answering to the 
second commandment. We ask that we may keep holy and 
reverend in our hearts, awful and solitary in our thoughts, 
the name of the great God our Father. 

To do this is impossible before an image or a picture which 
professes to represent Divinity. The image or the picture 
degrades the idea of Divinity, profanes it and makes it com- 
mon. Therefore images were forbidden in worship. Not 
only the images, as they might purport to be, of God, but 



Image Worship 209 

images of anything in heaven,' in earth, or under Ithe earth, 
which might be used as media to approach Divinity, or 
which might be believed to contain any Divine influence. 
As means of grace, as well as objects of w^orship, they are 
absolutely excluded by the commandment. And the peti- 
tion, " Hallowed be Thy Name," expresses the reason. 

It was not without design that the Lord left no image or 
picture of His holy person behind Him. He put the ques- 
tion .of worshipping an image of Himself out of sight by leav- 
ing no image. There is not even the shadow of authenticity 
upon any reputed relic. We are not even sure of the site of 
Calvary or Gethsemane, His crucifixion or His burial. Even 
the Mount of his His ascension is not known or named. 
The *^ fragments of the true cross," the " holy coats," etc., 
are all impostures. Nobody but the most superstitious and 
ignorant Romanists believe that there is on earth one genuine 
relic of the Lord, or of His mother, or indeed of any early 
saint. 

There was a design in this. Considering all things — the 
reverence and love of the Apostles, for instance — it is very 
strange that there is no word for ages of any relic of our 
Lord's early life, and that "the discovery of the true cross," 
in the fourth century, by Helena, should have been so sus- 
piciously a cooked up thing. 

No picture, and no relic, whose genuineness is even proba- 
ble, exists of our Lord, or of His Apostles, or indeed of any 
early Christian worthy. One cannot help connecting the 
strange fact with that second commandment which our 
Roman Catholic brethren are in the habit of omitting from 
their list, and with the petition in the Lord's Prayer. 

It wouldbe almost impossible for Christians to avoid wor- 
shipping a genuine picture of our Lord. They would come 
very near so deailng with a genuine relic. One of His mother 
would naturally enough receive deep reverence, or one of 
any of the Apostles. But they do not exist. Therefore our 
Roman Catholic friends hang various pictures of impossible 



2IO Copy. 

people about their houses, oratories, and churches, and label 
them with the names of our Lord and His Apostles, and go 
down on their knees before them, and then justify themselves 
by informing us that we love and regard the pictures of our 
friends. Why, yes ! The pictures of dear friends, but not 
the pictures of nobody at all, only labelled with the names 
of our friends, and which are as much like our friends as 
we like Hercules. 

The pictures, so-called, of the Virgin — there are scores 
of them, in all positions, and they are highly reverenced by 
our Romish friends, and dilettanteized and sentimentalized 
over by many of our Protestant friends, — are, we all know, 
when we think, only portraits of women by no means always 
reputable, the mistress of the artist, painted as the Madonna 
in one picture, and as Venus in another. 

The pictures, so-called, of our blessed Lord, are more 
shocking still. An Italian beggar man, or thief, with a pic- 
turesque beard and hair, is painted, and the painting labelled 
with the holiest name ! 

The pictures of the Apostles are conventional. A monk 
with a lion is St. Mark, a monk with an eagle is St. John, 
a monk with a sword is>St. Paul, and one with a big key is 
St. Peter. They are merely pictures of the most picturesque 
old loafers the painter could find for his model. 

Here, then, is where the Romish argument fails to reach 
us. We have heard it a score of times, and expect to a score 
or two more. We admit, in one way, its force. We do ven- 
erate the pictures of great men. We do love, and might 
perhaps " salute," the picture of a very dear friend. We are 
free to acknowledge, we should deeply venerate the picture 
of our Lord, or of one of His Apostles. But when our Ro- 
mish friend puts us in front of a dime lithograph, manufac- 
tured in Ann street, and tells us that is our Lord's picture, we 
beg leave to retire before our disgust gets the better of us. 
Or, when he soars a step higher, and shows us the picture of 
a picturesque Italian bandit, and says that is Christ's, and 



Image Worship. 211 

we should salute it, and kneel before it, we respectfully de- 
cline so stultifying ourselves and insulting our Master. Or, 
again, when he presents us to the portrait of a young woman 
of questionable life, with an infant in her lap, and demands 
that we shall reverence this picture as that of the Virgin 
Mother and her Child, we might beg that he will please to go 
no farther. The thing is getting unbearable. His anxiety 
to reverence " sacred pictures " is rapidly carrying him be- 
yond Christian decency. 



PRAYING TOWARD THE EAST. 

IN all worship there has been " a point of prayer," — some 
place or thing toward which the worshipper turned. 
The Jew, wherever found, the world over, worshipped to- 
ward Jerusalem, — the city and temple of the special pres- 
ence of the Omnipotent God. The ancient Persian turned 
toward the rising sun at morn, and toward the setting sun 
at eve. The special presence of Ormuzd dwelt, he thought, 
in the sun. The Mohammedan turns still, as he always has, 
toward Mecca, and from any spot where he prays, directs 
his prayer toward his sacred city. 

The false religions have imitated and followed the true. 
For the true came fitted to human weakness. Man cannot 
grasp the infinite. The omnipresence of God bewilders 
him. Therefore God, condescending to man's infirmity, 
localized Himself, as it were, that man might worship. He 
dwelt "between the cherubim," in the Tabernacle and in 
the Temple. Men were authorized to pray toward the 
place in which his name was, toward the city and the house 
which he had chosen. And, as false religions took sacri- 
fices and a priesthood — so prophesying unconsciously of the 
great Sacrifice and the great Priest which the true faith con- 
sciously proclaimed — so, too, in their "points of prayer," they 
unconsciously prophesied of the great unknown fact of the 
Incarnation which the presence between the cherubim typi- 
fied, — the Incarnation which united the Infinite and the 
finite, and made worship possible, — God coming down to man 
since man cannot rise to God. 

The early Christians, like the Jews, had their point of 



Praying Toward the East. 21 3 

prayer, a direction in which they prayed. There is no fact 
better attested than the fact that they worshipped toward 
the East. When a man was baptized he turned toward the 
East to make his vows to Christ. He turned toward the 
West to renounce Satan. And it became, agreeably to this 
practice at initiation, the universal custom to worship in the 
same direction. 

Tertullian, in his "Apology," mentions the custom, and 
says the heathen thought Christians worshipped the sun, be- 
cause "they prayed toward the region of the East." 

Clement of Alexandria mentions the same custom : 
" Our prayers are toward the East, because the East is the 
image of our spiritual birth." (" Stromata," Book vii.) 

St. Augustine is quite full upon the reason, in his sec- 
ond book on the Sermon on the Mount *• " When we stand 
at prayers we turn to the East, whence the light rises, not as 
if God, who is everywhere present, not in local spaces, but 
in the majesty of His power, were there only, and had de- 
serted the other parts of the world ; but that the soul may 
be admonished to turn itself toward a better nature, that 
is, toward the Lord." 

Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, and many others, 
mention the same custom and give reasons for it ; some one 
reason and some another. But the reason, in all cases, has 
reference solely to the astronomical east. 

Basil says : " We pray toward the East, because we seek 
our old native land of Paradise which God planted in Eden 
toward the East." 

Gregory of Nyssa says : " We turn ourselves toward the 
East, not as if God were there only, for he is everywhere, and 
is contained in no space, but because in the East was our 
first country, the rest in Paradise whence we have fallen." 

Whatever be the reason assigned for the custom, 
whether because the East was the seat of Paradise, as Basil 
and Gregory say, or because there the light rises, as St. Au- 
gustine says, or because, as they turned to the East to make 



214 Copy. 

the vows of enlistment in baptism, so they turned ever after 
to pray, as Clement of Alexandria explains it, or because 
"the East was the seat of light and brightness," as others 
give it, — whatever reason is assigned by any ancient writer 
for this universal custom of praying toward the East, it is a 
reason which derives all its force from the fact that it was 
the east, the astronomical east, and nothing else, toward 
which they turned. 

To found any argument for praying toward an altar, or 
for turning to the altar in worship, from the primitive cus- 
tom of praying toward the East, is a sophistical delusion. 
If there are reasons for turning to the altar, they must be 
found outside the writings of all the early fathers. They 
knew nothing of directing prayers toward an altar, conse- 
quently they give no reasons for a practice of which they 
were ignorant. They give various reasons, some good, some 
fanciful, some- trifling, for turning in prayer toward the 
eastern heavens, — a custom universal among them. They 
give no reasons for turning toward any part of the church 
building or any article of furniture in it, for they are utterly 
ignorant of any such custom. 

" But did not the altar stand in the east, and therefore in 
praying did they not turn toward the altar ? " 

Undoubtedly, if the altar stood eastward, they turned 
toward it in worship, at least those west of the altar did ; but 
not because it was an altar, but because it stood between 
the worshipper and the point toward which he worshipped. 
He could not very well worship toward the east without 
turning to the altar, if the altar stood before him. But, as a 
fact, all churches were not built toward the east. They 
were built to all points of the compass. The magnificent 
cathedral at Tyre, described in such high-flown rhetoric by 
Eusebius, the historian, who preached the consecration ser- 
mon, was built with the chancel to the west. Consequently, 
in that church, the worshippers in turning to the east, the 
place of light, "turned their backs upon the altar." 



Praying Toward the East. 21 5 

But there is still something more remarkable from the 
construction of ancient churches when we consider this cus- 
tom of praying toward the East. The altar was not set 
against the wall. It stood out under the apse, and the clergy- 
sat behind it, the bishop in the midst, and the presbyters 
on either hand, in a semi-circle. This is the uniform ar- 
rangement, as the ecclesiastical antiquarians tell us, and 
they cite for it abundant evidence. The altar stood in front 
of the clergy, and the clergy behind the altar faced the peo- 
ple. Such is the case with the altar of St. Peter's, at Rome, 
and generally in all continental cathedrals built in the Basil- 
ican style. 

Now, since they worshipped toward the east, it follows 
that in a church built with the chancel in the east, as was 
perhaps the most usual way, the clergy, in turning to the 
east, turned their backs upon the people indeed, but also 
turned their backs upon the altar. And in a church built 
like the cathedral of Tyre, described by Eusebius, since they 
worshipped toward the east and the altar was in the west, 
the people must have turned their backs upon the clergy 
and upon the altar too, when they prayed. 

It is only fair to remind those who may be startled at a 
proceeding so contradictory to all their notions of propriety, 
that an ancient church was a very different sort of thing 
from any church with which we are acquainted. Among 
other things in which it differed from ours, we must remem- 
ber it had no pews. The floor was entirely bare. There 
were only two postures for the worshippers. When they 
were not standing they were kneeling, and on all Sundays, 
and many other days besides, standing was the only posture 
throughout the entire service. 

In churches where the people had no seats ; where men 
had one side and women another, and the children still 
another ; where people washed their hands, and sometimes 
laid aside their sandals before entering ; where the lessons 
were read in the middle of the nave, and sometimes the ser- 



2 1 6 Copv. 

mons preached there ; where the holy table stood out in the 
middle of the sanctuary, and the clergy stood behind it; in 
churches different in so many things from ours, and in a 
worship which, though essentially the same, differed in out- 
ward guise so much from any we see now ; in such churches 
it need not startle us to find, among other strange things, 
this also, that instead of turning toward the altar to wor- 
ship, the people turned away from it, or, if it was so placed 
that the people faced it, then the clergy must have turned 
their backs upon it. As we have said, there may be reasons 
for turning toward the altar to worship, but those reasons 
cannot connect themselves with the ancient custom of turn- 
ing toward the east. That had its reasons and gave them, 
but they are reasons which had nothing to do with an altar. 
They look, away beyond the church walls and the church 
furniture entirely, to the eastern heavens and the rising 
light. The reasons for turning toward the altar are founded 
on a well-known view of the Holy Eucharist, if there are 
any reasons at all beyond fitness and the proprieties of 
things. 

If we are to go on wisely, we must go on grounds which 
will bear testing. Our reasons must be intelligent and true 
reasons. It is not safe to trust ourselves to assumptions. 
And whether turning to the altar in prayer be a desirable 
thing or not, on other grounds, it is a mere assumption that 
it has any connection with the very primitive and universal 
custom of praying toward the east. These are days when 
men must be content to go to the roots of things they advo- 
cate. We must find reasons that will stand and bear the 
weight we lay upon them in all matters. 



LIBERTY, AND WHAT IT COSTS. 

A CATHOLIC Church differs, among other matters, 
from sectarianism, in that it is fi-ee. Under law, it 
allows the largest liberty. It makes allowance for the 
various differences of character among men, and expects no 
man to be precisely like his neighbor. Seeking to take in 
all sorts of men ; making Jew and Gentile, Barbarian, 
Scythian, bond, and free, all one in Christ Jesus, it does not 
expect to reduce them all to the same type. It makes them 
Christians, and, in that larger relationship, ignores the small 
differences expressed by the other names. 

The sect idea is, that men are to be moulded after one 
pattern, — cramped and pressed into one shape. Those who 
do not like the process, may leave the sect. If they choose 
to remain, they must take the artificial stamp of the ism. 
There is no freedom, consequently. A man must speak the 
sect shibboleth, and learn the sect dialect, and bend to the 
prying and inquisitive sect law. That men can belong to 
the same body and do their own independent thinking, have 
their own opinions and express them, and be masters of 
their own conscience and personality, is an idea that is 
impossible to the sectarian. If one speaks, for instance, of 
the unity of the Church to a man brought up in the atmos- 
phere of the prevailing sectarianism, he is met with the 
assertion that it is impossible. He may reply that the 
Church was one visible corporation and commonwealth 
once ; he may show the objector the fact, and convince him 
of it. It does not, in any degree, convince the objector of 
the possibility of seeing such a thing again. He goes on to 

lO 



2i8 Copy. 

ask, " Why not ? What has been, may it not be again ? ** 
And he is answered, " Men can never be brought to think 
alike/' 

He has now reached the real source of the distrust. 
The man has a notion that men cannot " belong to a 
Church," unless they all think alike. He knows that men 
never have thought alike ; knows that most probably they 
never will ; and so he argues they never can belong to the 
same Church. It is the sectarian idea of unity ; the idea 
that destroys individual freedom ; that allows no differences 
of opinion ; that provides religion for a particular class ; 
that refuses to recognize the variety that God makes in 
unity ; that insists on forcing on all men a small set of 
temporary or local opinions, which are of consequence only 
to a few. 

Some years ago, as we heard the story, a respectable 
preacher of the " Covenanting Church of Scotland," a 
small, queer, ultra-Calvinistic sect of Presbyterians, which 
originated in the time of the First Charles, was invited to 
preach before the New York Legislature ; and the good old 
gentleman took the occasion to " bear his testimony " by 
informing the astonished Solons at Albany that there is no 
help or hope for "an uncovenanted people," and that their 
duty was to adopt, at once, "the Solemn League and 
Covenant," to " resist Popery and Prelacy," which a few 
Scotch zealots entered into, a couple of centuries ago, to 
oppose poor Charles Stuart ! The good old man had never 
got a glimpse of the fact that his sect, and its " Solemn 
Covenant," and all the rest of it, are about as important to 
the Church of God, in its wide extent and long history, as a 
squabble among the elders and deacons in his own "session." 

It is a curious fact, too, that the smaller the sect — the 
narrower, more local, and more temporary — the more obsti- 
nately it insists that all men must adopt its oddities ; and 
the more particularly it magnifies the vital necessity, for sal- 
vation, of its whimsies. 



Liberty, and What it Costs. ^1^ 

The Catholic idea of unity is, of course, utterly opposed 
to all this. It is not at all necessary that men should all 
think alike in order to belong to the same Church. It is 
easy enough to preserve unity when all agree. The point 
of Christian duty is to preserve unity when men do not 
agree. Then come in patience, charity, faith, gentleness, 
meekness, — all those Christian graces of which the visible 
unity of the Church was meant to be the school. Men 
recognize each other's rights ; men tolerate each other's 
peculiarities ; men hold each other for brethren, and near 
and dear brethren too, and differ very widely notwithstand- 
ing. They gather round the same altar ; they partake of 
the same bread; they mingle their common prayers and 
join in the same common words of praise, and each allows 
to each the liberty he claims for himself. They do not " all 
think alike," and, moreover, they do not expect to, in this 
world, at least ; and they do not think it, perhaps, at all 
desirable that they should ; and yet they are all members of 
the same body, and are all partakers of the common salva- 
tion. 

The fact is, that it has been the attempt to make all men 
think alike which has broken unity from the first. The 
attempt to make all men agree is the road, not to unity, but 
to schism. Christianity never can be one again on that 
ground. It is the schismatic, overbearing, dividing spirit at 
once. And until the mass of Christians can be got to see 
that there is very little hope that schisms will be fewer ; till 
men are content to give up the foolish attempt to make 
everybody after their own pattern, there will not be one sect 
the less in this country or any other. 

It is one of the internal evidences that the Protestant 
Episcopal Church is a true Catholic Church, that she makes 
no effort to make her members all alike ; that, on the other 
hand, she is rather adverse to even the effort. She feels, 
instinctively, that any such effort is only sectarianism, and 
she shrinks from allowing it. 



220 Copy. 

It is a reproach to her often, from the outside, that she 
tolerates such large differences of opinion. Men thinking and 
speaking from sectarian grounds utterly misapprehend the 
matter, and point to the differences allowed within her as 
evidence of the little unity she possesses. A Churchman, 
on the other hand, holds up those differences as evidence of 
the vast unity that allows great divergences with no dan- 
ger of division. 

The Church acts on the Catholic spirit, and guards the 
rights of Christ's freemen. She allows no dominating sec- 
tarianism to insist that all men must submit to its narrow 
and conceited dictation. She knows the vastness of truth, 
and the narrowness of human vision ; and yet, nevertheless, 
holds that every man is responsible for the use of his own 
eyes, and is entitled to his own eyesight. On a vast variety 
of matters on which sects are formed, and about which sec- 
tarians quarrel, she leaves her children free under the 
analogy of the Apostolic faith. It is better for their spirit- 
ual growth, for their souls' health and strength, that they 
should be free to grow and develop under the open sunlight 
and the liberal rain and dew, in God's great harvest-field, 
than that each plant should be forced and pressed and 
cramped by artificial management. Wheat is always wheat, 
and tares are always tares; yet every wheat-stalk in the 
largest field ever sown has its own individuality, and is not 
precisely like any other stalk in the whole world. It has had 
its own special sunlight, its own visitation of rain-drops and 
dew moisture, its own peculiar blasts to bend and incline it, 
its own particular messages from the silent earth, where its 
roots are hid, and all have made it what it is, and have 
helped to its particular contribution to the harvest. 

So the Churchman accepts the large freedom of opinion 
allowed in the Church as evidence that she is truly Catholic. 
He would be very jealous of any attempt to limit that free- 
dom, to legislate or dogmatize on what is indifferent. He 
expects to find, in any Church deserving the name Catholic, 



Liberty, and What it Costs. 221 

a wide allowance of varying, perhaps of opposing, views. It 
does not confuse or trouble him that such is the case in his 
own. He knows it was so in the early day. He knows it must 
be so always while men are men. Unity exists in diversity. 
Catholicity must embrace large variety. Outside the clear, 
distinct, and simple faith, there must be possibility for all 
thoughtful and proper preferences. 

And accepting the fact that Churchmen will differ among 
themselves, and have the right to, without any breach of 
unity, he also accepts the consequence that they will advo- 
cate their differences by tongue and pen, that they will 
defend them and seek to make converts to them, and 
zealously propagate them, in all lawful and Christian ways. 

In this, also, there is no breach of unity This also is a 
catholic right. The most zealous and eager advocacy of a 
man's own views and opinions is a thing not to be deplored, 
but encouraged. It is no breach of charity, but is, in itself, 
charity in the highest. A man has no right to keep any- 
thing he considers the truth concealed. He is bound to set 
it out, bound to offer it, bound to persuade others to accept 
it. All this, of course, under conditions, limitations, and 
responsibilities. 

That is, he must be prepared to see what he considers 
the truth opposed by brethren who do not consider it a 
truth. He must be content to find them attacking his 
notions and advocating their own. He must be quite will- 
ing to find them and others entirely rejecting what he 
considers very important, and must be ready all the time to 
love them no less, and to bate no jot of his brotherly affec- 
tion toward them on that account, for they are exercising 
their right as he exercises his. 

Differences of opinion are no breach of unity or charity ; 
different schools of thought have a perfect right to exist in 
the Church catholic. And the advocacy of these differ- 
ences, and the setting out of the opinions of these different 
schools, warmly and zealously too, are no breach of unity. 



222 Copy. 

The breach of unity comes when either of the different 
opinions or different schools comes to insist that it only is 
to be tolerated, and that, on peril of salvation, all must come 
to its way of thinking. 

A man has, in a catholic Church, a right to his own 
freedom. But so, also, has every other man. He breaks 
unity, becomes a schismatic and sectarian, when he insists 
that everybody else must think as he does, and denies 
them the Christian name or character, doubts their 
Christianity or their piety, believes them traitors to the 
Lord or the Church when they take the liberty to refuse 
his notions. And it does not alter the matter a whit 
though he call his notions the faith, or his pet whim- 
sicalities essential catholic verities, or his opinions the 
fundamental doctrines of the Gospel or the scheme of 
salvation. The breach lies in his intolerable conceit, his 
spiritual pride and tyranny ; and the bigger and more impos- 
ing the names he gives his peculiar views, the more is he 
convicted of the schismatic spirit. We, therefore, do not 
complain that there are different schools of thought in the 
Church. She would not be catholic if there were not. We 
do not complain that all men do not think as we do. We 
do not desire they should. Neither does it trouble us that 
men in the Church discuss their differences, and discuss 
them, too, with fervor and zeal. We accept all this when 
we accept liberty. This is a part of the price we pay for 
liberty, and we think the price is really very small, consider- 
ing the purchase. 

But there is something more. Men not only differ, and 
advocate their differences warmly, they also sometimes 
advocate them foolishly. And often good people are 
troubled at this, and complain of it bitterly. 

Some foolish or weak person is extravagant about his 
whimsies, or those of his party. He talks foolishly, or he 
writes foolishly or weakly. He "disgraces the Church," we 
^re told, or he " injures the Church " by his absurd non- 



Liberty, and What it Costs. 223 

sense. And the people " want to know why the Bishop does 
not stop him!" They think "the Convention ought to 
do something about it," or there " ought to be a canon 
against such proceedings." He is a fooHsh " High Church- 
man," or a fooHsh " Low Churchman," a foolish " Ritual- 
ist," or a foolish " Evangelical." He acts nonsensically. 
He babbles nonsensically. He behaves in the most absurd 
manner about his pet hobbies and whimsies. And many 
good, sober people are shamed, hurt, and grieved. They 
would like to see him put down. They think " his goings 
on ought to be stopped somehow," and they grieve at the 
lack of discipline in the Church which tolerates him. 

It is very true that weakness, conceit, and folly are not 
at all pleasant, certainly not edifying. They do the Church 
no good, that is true. But it is also true that the Church is 
a very tough institution. If weakness and folly could have 
destroyed the Church, there would have been an end of it 
long before any of us w^ere born. There is no reason for 
going into spasms of agony, or shrieking despair over the 
small performances of weak brethren. The Church will 
survive all that, as she has survived so much else in this 
world. It takes a great deal to hurt her. It takes an enor- 
mous amount to do her any serious injury. We may put 
our timid fears aside. But, nevertheless, that does not 
make weakness or foolishness any pleasanter or any wiser. 
True, only we must remember that weakness and foolish- 
ness are also a part of the price of liberty. Freedom for all 
means freedom for the weak as well as freedom for the 
strong, for the fool as well as for the wise. 

A free state pays the penalty. It must be free at the 
expense of hearing fools babble and letting weak silliness 
get printed. It must be content to tolerate nonsense as well 
as sense, crude folly as well as wisdom. All alike must be 
thrown to the surface in any free community. The liberty 
that asks the opinions of the wise and the strong must be 
content to take also the opinions, and perhaps the more 



224 Copy. 

abundant opinions, of those who are neither. If once you 
begin to restrict and repress, where will it end ? Who are 
to be the judges ? Clearly, liberty is at an end, and despot- 
ism is begun the moment any man's legal rights are inter- 
fered with. And in all free governments a man's natural 
and legal right to make a fool of himself must be protected. 
We may advise him, dissuade him, plead affectionately with 
him, if we will. But that is all. Inside the law, he must be 
carefully guarded in his inherent right. We cannot compel 
him to be a sensible man by penalties. 

It is exactly the same in a free catholic Church. It is 
one of the inconveniences that liberty and catholicity 
entail, that liberty will be abused, that catholicity will 
be made an excuse for human weakness. But these things 
cannot be reached by enactment. The free organization 
can tolerate them. Abundant life throws off weak growths 
as well as strong. The healthy apple-tree sheds the most 
windfalls, — it has the most to shed. A strong, free, healthy, 
large-minded organization can smile serenely at the weak- 
nesses and conceits of this side or that. It lives its own 
life, tolerating things as they come, and minding them very 
little even when they are noisiest. 

It would be a fatal error to undertake to exterminate 
these weaknesses or conceits on either side, not because 
they are nice things in themselves, but because it is impos- 
sible to get rid of them without getting rid also of liberty. 
Freedom in Church or State, it is well to remember, has its 
inconveniences. On the whole, we think it is worth all it 
costs, and we are, for our part, quite willing to pay the 
price. 



THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL. 

THE time calls itself practical It values, or pretends 
to value, only what will produce results. It claims 
to have no love for mere theory, and undertakes to measure 
the value of a thing by what the thing will do. It also 
admires practical men. It rather sneers at the men of the 
closet and the lamp. The busy, ready, active man, with all 
his powers in exercise, and an opinion ready on all matters 
that may come up — a plausible opinion at any rate, be its 
value what it may — is the favorite man of the day. 

Whenever there is a great deal of talk on any matter, 
and the talk is continued for a long time, there is a good 
deal of the talk which degenerates into mere cant. Shallow 
people, insincere people, take up the talk of the time, and 
repeat it, parrot-like, shallowly and insincerely. Honest 
people, also, are deluded by any prevailing tone of thought, 
and honestly repeat words because other people do, taking 
it for granted that whatever everybody says must be right. 
Consequently, there is a great deal of mere cant about this 
business of the practical and the theoretical. Much of the 
talk has become mere talk, and honest people are imposed 
upon by assumptions. 

The Church, which would seem to deal with the great 
world of ideas, and might be expected to know their worth, 
has been involved by the talk of the day, and is fond of 
praising the " practical " man, and sneering at the man of 
thought as a mere theorist and dreamer. This is rather 
strange in the Church, inasmuch as the men of thought and 
theory have always been her great leaders and heroes, and 



226 Copy. 

inasmuch as she is always preaching, not about the seen, 
but about the unseen. 

To understand the real relations of the theoretical and 
the practical, and give both their value, it is necessary first 
to get rid of the assumption that they are opposed. It is 
on that assumption that so much talk gets itself uttered. 
It is that assumption that imposes on simple people. Is 
there any antagonism between the two ? 

Manifestly all action, to be wise, coherent, aimful, and 
productive, must base itself on some principle. The differ- 
ence between the productive activity of the sound-minded 
man, and the aimless fuss and restlessness of the idiot, is 
that the man of sense has a theory, an unseen scheme and 
design, by which, consciously or unconsciously, he is acting. 
Of two men equally active and industrious and persever- 
ing, one will produce results and attain purposes. His ac- 
tivity will be fruitful to himself and others. The other, 
just as laborious, and apparently far more busy, because he 
is far more "fussy," will reach no end. His activities are 
fruitless, his work unsuccessful. The explanation is, that 
the first has a clear, defined theory of action, a definite sys- 
tem, invisible but real, on which he conducts his industries, 
and the other is the " practical" man, that lives from hand 
to mouth. 

All practice, everywhere, to be worth anything, must root 
itself in theory. In fact, every man does act on some theory. 
The value of his action depends generally on the value of 
his theory. As most theories are shallow enough, and as 
men are fond of sneering at any examination of their theo- 
ries as impractical, the result is the general average of shal- 
low action. The theologian understands that doctrine lies 
at the roots of all life, and that a good practice cannot long 
consist with a bad or weak doctrine. Now doctrine, in re- 
ligion and morals, is like theory in other things. The seed 
is of value as it produces fruit. The fruit is the aim and 
end for which the seed exists. But because the fruit is the 



Theoretical and Practical. 227 

end, no man sneers at the farmer for selecting and planting 
the seed. No man thinks him a bit more " practical " in 
the harvest field than in the furrow field. 

As a matter of fact, it has been ideas which have 
changed and ruled the world, and will change and rule it to 
the end. As soul is to body, so is theory to the practice 
which clothes it. The practice is mortal. The theory is 
immortal. The practice changes into other forms. The 
theory lives forever the same. 

The great leaders in the world have been the men of 
theory, and especially the great leaders in the Church. It 
will be a sad day for the Church when Athanasius, the man 
of thought and theory and ideas, is put behind such an 
one as Eusebius of Nicomedia, the busy man of practice in 
courts and councils ; when Augustine of Hippo is counted 
of less consequence than even such an administrator as 
Cyprian of Carthage. Ideas have dominated always, and a 
living and true theory, elaborated in silence and solitude, 
apart from the confusions and darknesses of the time, and 
cast into the seed-bed of the world, has borne fruit for 
generations, when the head that thought it out is turned to 
dust. 

To say, then, of a man that he is a theorist, is to say 
good of him, and not harm. No man was ever worth his 
salt on earth who was not a theorist in some degree. To 
say even that he is a mere theorist, is by no means to con- 
demn him. Many a mere theorist has produced more re- 
sults than a regiment of busy, practical gentlemen, very 
dexterous and skilful in living from hand to mouth. It all 
turns on the nature of the theory itself. Is the theory a 
good or bad one, a wise or unwise theory .^ Is it true or 
false.? That is the way to put it. The affair is not dis- 
missed when some glib individual exclaims, " Oh, that is 
mere theory ! " We answer, " Granted. But theory is the end 
of all life. The Church is based on theories. The State 
stands on theories. The Christian family rests on a theory. 



228 Copy. 

Our dearest possessions of heart and hope on earth, and of 
trust for heaven, rest on theories. The visible is underlain 
by the invisible. The unseen sustains and props the seen. 
We admit this theory to be theory, and value it because 
it is theory. If you come to inquire whether it is true or 
false theory, we will listen, but the fact that it is theory is 
not in debate." That is, theory and practice are both to be 
judged by the same measure. To say of something, " Oh, 
that is merely practical ! " is to say nothing to the purpose. 
The question is, is it practical for good or practical for evil ? 
It may be either, and yet it is not uncommon to find wise 
people who think that when they have said of a thing, " It is 
practical," they have put it beyond question thenceforth. 
Mary of England was eminently practical. So was Philip 
of Spain. Bonner was a practical bishop. So, too, was 
Woolsey, before him. We fancy it does not turn their lives 
into beauty to say they were all " practical, " and not " mere 
theorists." 

We think the times call for a little deliverance from this 
popular cant which makes an opposition between things not 
opposed. Especially do we think the Church needs to guard 
herself from any glorification of mere dexterity and shallow 
smartness, under the notion that she is wisely practical. 

Nothing can stand unless based on the eternal founda- 
tions unseen. We want to know on what theory the practi- 
cal man is acting, in order to judge of the wisdom of his ac- 
tion. If he has no theory, if he professes to despise theory 
and to look only to practical results, his actions are mere 
makeshifts, the temporary expedients of the hour. He can- 
not be trusted. His course is beyond guess. In the hour 
of trial he will fail and disappoint. He may be like a dex- 
terous politician, a plausible advocate for any cause. He is 
utterly unlike the wise statesman who guides on principle, 
or the judge who decides by fixed law. 

Let us accept the men of theory, and be thankful for 
them. They are dealing with things that will stand. Let 



Theoretical and Practical. 229 

us test their theories carefully, but let us not dream that we 
have dismissed the matter by saying that they are " mere 
theories." And let us accept the men of action, and be thank- 
ful for them too. But let us understand that the value of 
their action depends altogether on the theory on which it is 
based. Mere activity, without such basis, is aimless folly, — 
a beating of the air, a walking,, like a blind horse in a mill, 
forever round the same circle. 

With the greatest respect for the practical, let us bring it 
always to the test of this question : " On what theory is the 
practical founded.^" Let us never ignorantly dream that 
mere activity, the most intense practicality, is of any value. 
It may be the most aimless folly. We want to know what a 
man means by his activity, and where his practicality is 
about to land him, before we accept his leadership. 

Good theory first ; then good practice on that theory is 
the solution of the whole matter for a man or a people, and 
especially for a Church. Let no man be cheated by mere 
phrases. 



SACRAMENTAL RELIGION. 

THE difficulty, felt by many, about accepting the doc- 
trine of Sacraments, comes often from looking at 
them from the Divine side only. They are considered as 
arbitrary enactments of Divinity. They are not measured 
as gifts to humanity. For, from our own side, we can see 
that man needs Sacraments ; that any religion fitted to man's 
nature must be a Sacramental religion. Merely from the 
study of man we would conclude, that if Christianity is the 
gift of God to him, it must be a religion in which Sacra- 
ments have a prominent place. 

Man himself, in this world, is a sort of Sacrament, — " an 
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." 
A spirit clothed in matter, his spirit must be reached 
through matter. He must be approached through the 
fleshly doors. Spiritual powers, to tell upon him, must 
come clothed. The very articulate sounds by which he 
expresses his spiritual ideas are a kind of universal Sacra- 
ment. The written page, or the printed one, where black 
lines and letters clothe his thought, is the same. All the 
powers of the great unseen world of spirits, that spreads away 
around him, reveal themselves to him in some tangible 
coverings. So only can these powers affect him. God him- 
self, when revealing purely spiritual truth, submits to the 
necessity of His creature, and makes the revelation in His 
creature's speech or writing. But, for the necessities of man, 
the Sacrament of speech is not enough. He cannot express 
the highest and even the best of human ideas by speech 
alone. He forms for those ideas the signs and symbols of 



Sacramental Religion. 23 1 

some expressive act ; or he adopts some emblem, more 
eloquent in its silence than any words. Friend meets 
friend after a long absence. There are words enough by 
which to express gladness and sympathy and good wishes. 
But will mere words content them } Do we not know that 
in such an hour words utterly fail 7 The emotions of the 
heart demand a sign, and we have made it. The Sacrament 
of the clasped hands (we speak it reverently) is the only 
thing that can begin to express the thought. Or, the father 
meets a returned son. Will words satisfy to express his 
emotions ? The hands laid in blessing upon the bowed head 
can alone fitly symbolize parental love. The heart de- 
mands the outward sign of the inward feeling, and the 
tongue is dumb perforce. 

So, among ourselves, we have made these human Sacra- 
ments signs and embodiments of human feelings for human 
good. We have clothed the expression of all our loves in 
signs. Language fails man again and again. It will not 
embody his idea; it will not express his love; it will not 
reveal his sentiment. He flies to symbols then ; he creates 
outward signs of great inward realities. He does not de- 
mand very costly elements either for these signs. The 
most common thing will answer. The more common, 
generally, the better. The sign should have the least value, 
that the mind may remain undisturbed in contemplating 
the thing signified. He takes a poor cheap rag. He colors 
it with cheap color. He puts it on a pole. He makes it the 
symbol of his patriotism. It means love of country. It 
means loyalty. It means honor. He follows it through the 
storm of battle. He charges up heights slippery with 
blood, where it leads the way. He bears it rent and ragged, 
bullet-torn and powder-stained, into the black battery's jaws 
of flame. He staggers with it through the pelting hail of 
rifle-shots, and falls with it, clasping it in his arms in death, 
dying to save // from dishonor. Does he die for a rag upon 
a pole } According to what one often hears talked about 



232 Copy. 

the Sacrament, he does. But we know that he does not. 
The flag is (reverently we say it) the nation's Sacrament. 
It stands for all the loves and thoughts and feelings that 
cluster about the mother-land. He bravely dies for the 
great unseen realities that flag expresses. 

No, the matter of our human Sacraments may be very 
mean. It may be very cheap to the thoughtless or the 
stranger. It may be some worn-out old ring, never shown 
to common eyes. Common eyes would see no value in it. 
A dollar would buy a better, it is so worn and tarnished. 
But it is lost one day. The owner offers a great reward. 
Among all the jeweller's cunning skill there is nothing so 
valued as that cheap old ring. It is the sign and symbol 
of a great reality to him who prized it so greatly, — the 
Sacrament of some friendship or some love that blessed his 
life with a great blessing long ago. 

The mother keeps among her hidden treasures some 
cheap remembrance of a dear child transplanted into Para- 
dise. How many mothers do, for Rachel still is weeping 
for her children. It is only a tattered little dress, a small 
shoe, may be, with the impress of the little feet, that ceased 
to patter in the upper rooms long since, upon it yet. It is 
a thing utterly valueless in your eyes or mine. But gold 
cannot buy it from her. There is a quick convulsive move- 
ment as she grasps it, and another tear that stains it as she 
reverently lays it by again — her little Sacrament of paternal 
love — and murmurs, " It was Willie's, or Charlie's, who 
died.'' 

No, words cannot measure even human thought or 
human feeling. Man forever insists on creating Sacra- 
ments. He stands dumb till the eloquence of the symbol 
speaks his heart out and stirs the hearts of others. 

So, we say, if God gives us a religion, it will surely be a 
Sacramental religion, because He knows man's needs. So 
Christianity has its Sacraments, where the thing that is 
visible to the eye is common and plain; where the thing 



Sacramental Religion. 233 

invisible is the priceless gift of God. God clothes His 
unseen blessings in these signs. Words cannot express His 
love, His pity, His grace to the soul of man. So, for man's 
good, He adopts man's other speech, and conveys the 
mercies of His measureless goodness by Sacramental sign. 

And it is not alone that God clothes Divine things in 
these outward coverings. The Sacraments are for man's 
use and blessing, and they have a meaning from both sides, — 
the earthward and the heavenward. They not only clothe 
the gifts of God, they also clothe the faith and love and 
hope of man As words will not express God's goodness 
toward man, so words will not express man's repentance, 
hope, or faith toward God. The Divine and the human ex- 
pression both meet in the Sacraments. Words are quite too 
feeble. They fail us before God. Why, we often find them 
fail us before men. So repentance, faith, trembling cries 
for pardon, tremulous glances toward heaven, new-born 
hope of peace and pardon, all are gathered and fused 
together, too great, too deep, too tender for human language, 
and find their fit and full expression only in the wonderful 
sign and seal of holy baptism. All aspirations for a better 
life, all resolutions to seek it, all cries to the great God for 
help in our weakness and light in our darkness, every better 
wish and better thought we concentrate into one grand act 
of appeal and pledge, and lift the symbol of them all before 
men and angels. That is what man does in baptism. It is 
ordained, not only that God may express Himself to man's 
comprehension, but that man may express himself to his 
own. And then, God clothes His infinite love in the other 
Sacrament, — that Divine pity and sorrow and tenderness 
which Calvary revealed, and conveys it in tangible expres- 
sion to His earthly children. But this is not all. Those 
children find the Sacrament a clothing also for their own 
love and their own tenderness. The love no profession 
begins to measure, the hope that rises toward the crown 
and palm, the tenderness that bows the heart before the 



234 Copy. 

"dear body bleeding," the speechless thoughtfulness that 
bends at the foot of the Cross, all are concentrated into this 
wonderful sign, all are sealed before earth and heaven by 
this awful seal of God's devising, all are confessed and 
exhibited here, while the soul trembles with the greatness 
of the simple act. 

Sacraments are not arbitrary, then ; not mere tests of 
submission or trials of faith. To teach them as if they 
were, is to miss their great use and meaning. They exist 
because man, being what he is, must have them ; because 
an unsacramental religion is an impossibility to him ; be- 
cause, if God had not furnished them for him, man would 
have invented them for himself. 



WHY WE PRAY. 

FROM the beginning of the world men have prayed. 
There has not yet been found the nation or tribe 
which has not, in some, form or other, appealed for help to 
the powers invisible. When his own strength has failed him, 
when there is no hope in man, when the blind, speechless 
brute forces of the material press him in and crush him 
down, man turns, by instinct, to the awful powers unseen, 
and cries to them for deliverance. 

When Christianity taught man to " pray without ceas- 
ing," when it represented the "continuing instant in 
prayer " as the Christian position, it was not teaching any- 
thing unusual or strange, as far as the act itself is concerned. 
Prayer was something quite familiar to the human mind al- 
ready. Christianity only taught the proper object of prayer, 
and revealed Him who would hear prayer and answer it. 

Men have turned suppliant palms toward the blue 
abysses, have cried their pitiful cries to the dumb heavens, 
have knelt about the steps of the great throne, not knowing 
who sat thereon, have appealed out of the miseries, pains, 
and burdens of the weary world, — in all the centuries have 
they done this, in ignorant ways, and often in evil ways ; 
have done it with visions of a wrathful heaven, and of evil, 
hateful gods, but they have done it under that controlling 
instinct which drives man out of matter and out of time to 
cry to the invisible as stronger than the visible, to the spirit- 
ual as mightier than the material. Even in heathen men, 
their false and foolish, and oftentimes evil, worship is but 
the testimony of human nature to the being of God, only 



236 Copy. 

its strong though strange protest against a world without a 
God. 

Prayer occupies a large space in Christianity, and great 
things are spoken of it, and to it great things are promised. 
But prayer itself is not the distinction of Christianity, as it 
was not of Judaism before it. The right object of prayer, 
and the right method of praying, — these were the purposes 
of the revelation in both. " Teach us to pray,'* was the 
request of the disciples. Prayer itself, the duty and the 
privilege, was taken for granted. The question was not 
about praying. It was about praying rightly. 

The universal attitude of humanity, the attitude of 
heathens as of Christians, their own attitude in moments of 
sudden distress, of overwhelming pain, or crushing sorrow, 
is condemned, sometimes as unphilosophical, by men who 
were taught to pray at their mothers' knees, but who think 
they have outgrown all that as a childish superstition. And 
the reasons on which they condemn it are such as these : 

The laws of nature, they tell us, are immutable. No 
words of ours can alter them. God is unchangeable. It is 
foolish in us to suppose that we can persuade Him to change, 
or, for our sakes, to suspend His eternal activities. His love 
is eternal and immutable, as is His justice. He is " the 
same," even on our own principle, "yesterday, to-day, and 
forever," and can we expect to come before the Unchange- 
able One, and with poor words of ours make Him alter His 
face, or change His acts at our supplications 7 

There is felt to be a sophistry here, but the sophistry is 
so subtile as to escape many a devout soul which may be 
disturbed by it. The heart's instinct is against it, and yet 
there seems to be no reply often to the specious and appar- 
ently " philosophic " reasoning. Many a time in his life 
that instinct will be too strong even for the reasoner, and 
yet the reasoning will be repeated again and again, as if it 
were unanswerable. 

There are a few considerations which we think will help 



Why We Pray. 537 

to point out wherein the sophistry lies, and to suggest, at 
least, an answer. 

AVe, of course, admit the unchangeableness of God. We 
may go farther than the " philosophic " reasoning usually 
goes, and admit that we can do nothing to make God love 
or pity us a whit more than He does now. That love and 
pity are just the same whether we pray or do not pray, 
whether we repent or do not repent, whether we live godly 
lives or ungodly lives. They are both infinite, and of the 
very nature of God, and are always the same. But prayer 
proposes no change in the Unchangeable. Here is where 
the sophistry comes in, and it comes in not only here, but 
in many another popular mistake about religion. Christian- 
ity itself is a revelation of God only in so far as God can be 
revealed, — that is, in His relations to man, and man's rela- 
tion to him. It represents God as pleased or angry, as 
wrathful or pitiful, as hating or as loving, — that is, in His 
relations to man. 

Prayer proposes no change in God, neither does Chris- 
tianity, which plainly teaches that He is unchangeable. It 
proposes a change in the relation between God and man, — 
a very different matter. Christ himself came not to change 
God, but to change man. His religion undertakes not to 
change the Eternal, but to change the human. " God was 
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself," not reconcil- 
ing Himself unto the world. That is, when we speak of 
God and man, we speak of two, — one unchangeable, the other 
changeable. Between these two there are relations. And 
these relations are alterable, because one of the two is alter- 
able, and that one is man. 

The mountain stands fixed and unalterable. But the 
man is not fixed. The man moves as he wills. He may 
change his relation to the mountain in a hundred ways. He 
may be near it or far from it. He may be under its shadow, 
or may watch it under the full tide of sunlight. It may 
appear rugged and steep as he approaches on one side, or 



53^ Copy. 

smooth of ascent as he approaches it on another. The 
shadows may sleep in its overhanging crags from one point 
of view, from another it may flash back the sunlight and 
flame in the splendid whiteness of its eternal snows. The 
man may change his relations to the mountain, and see it 
under a thousand different appearances, frowning or smil- 
ing, inviting or repelling, beautiful or terrible, as he changes 
his own position from hour to hour, while still the rooted 
mountain stands unalterably the same. 

The great sun — image more than anything we know of 
the steadfast and unchanging — shines in the broad heavens 
always the same, day and night. To man looking on him 
from the earth, he presents a hundred faces, because the 
moving man, upon the moving earth and beneath the drift- 
ing vapors, looks on him from different points of view, and 
bears to him, through every day of the rolling year, different 
relations. He flames in fierce summer heat in August 
noons ; he looks watery and chill upon the shivering earth 
in the short December days. He looms broad and red in 
the hazy sunsets of the Indian summer, and leaps up flam- 
ing in the mornings of July. Now he conceals himself 
in clouds, and hides his face behind the veil of the tem- 
pest, and again breaks forth, scattering the mists and lighting 
up the million rain-drops on. the leaves with minute images 
of himself. In every twenty-four hours he disappears from 
sight as completely as if he were extinguished, and each 
day sees him, as it were, new created. And yet the change- 
less sun shines the same, century upon century, age on age, 
his warmth and light going forth perpetually. The relation 
of the man changes, in the light or in the darkness, in the 
heat or in the shadow, because the man changes. The per- 
petual sunlight falls the same on the dunghill and on the 
palace roof. 

The error of all heathenism lies in this, that it attempts 
to change God. It proposes to come before Him, and, 
with sacrifices and offerings, propitiate Him. He is wrath- 



Why We Pray. .239 

ful to-day, but offering to Him, praising Him, and praying 
to Him, can change Him so that He will not be wrathful 
to-morrow. Heathenism proposed no change in men. The 
immoral man, by a due performance of the ritual, might 
render God as propitious to him as to the moral man. 
Heathenism had, therefore, no moral value, in that it sup- 
posed the gods need to be reconciled to the world, and not 
the world reconciled to God. Christianity came, proclaim- 
ing the unchangeableness of God, and the truth that what- 
soever is wrong in the relations between God and man 
must be changed by a change in man. 

Whatsoever thought, therefore, among Christians, looks 
to change God, is a heathen thought still. If men sup- 
pose He needs changing, they are so far yet in the mist 
of paganism. If they dream that their worship is to act 
upon Him as a charm, their prayers and praises to propi- 
tiate Him, their repentance to render Him pitiful and 
merciful, they have not yet learned the alphabet of Chris- 
tianity. These things are valuable as they change men. 
God needs no change, and cannot change. But a change 
in a man changes his relations to God, though God him- 
self remain the same. He may take to-day one position, 
and another to-morrow. He may be ignorant of God, or 
he may know Him. He may be righteous before Him, or 
unrighteous. He may be rebellious or obedient. He may 
walk humbly before Him, or he may insult and blaspheme 
Him. He may live consciously in His presence, or he 
may forget Him. 

How to so live and so walk and so stand as to have 
our relations with the unchangeable God blessed and good, 
is the purpose of Christian teaching. To make them such, 
it goes so far in expressing the change which must come, 
not to God, but to man, as to call it even a new birth, 
a new creation, so utter is it. Now, we take it to be quite 
rational and thoroughly philosophic to hold that the rela- 
tion existing between a moral man and God, and that 



240 Copy. 

between an immoral man and God, are very different, 
while God himself remains the same. The relation exist- 
ing between a good man and God must be a different 
one from that existing between a bad man and God. The 
penitent sinner must stand in one way before Him, and 
the impenitent in another ; the righteous in one position, 
and the unrighteous in another. The relation varies as 
the men vary. 

The question, then, is not about changing God at all. 
It is about changing a man's self. How will he place him- 
self before God ? What relation will he bear to Him ? 
Will he be thankless or thankful ? Will he remember Him 
or forget Him ? Will he live conscious of Him, or will he 
ignore Him ? Will he be His son or His slave ? Will he 
come near, or will he stand afar off? 

Some relation he must be in toward God. He can 
choose what it shall be. He must himself make it, and 
make it by some change in himself, some alteration in his 
own position and character. So Christianity tells him. It 
guards him from the error of dreaming that he is to make it 
by any change in God. And this position of prayer is his 
to choose or refuse among the rest. He will see God in one 
way on his knees, in quite another way standing defiantly 
upon his feet. In one position God will look pitiful and 
merciful to him, in the other He will look stern and harsh, 
demanding the utmost farthing. 

The everlasting light and love, the everlasting pity an^ 
help, go forth forever the same, as does the eternal justice 
and judgment. Whether they come upon a man depends 
on the position he chooses. The sunlight flames and glows, 
shimmers on the mountain side, and palpitates upon the 
plain. A man can shut himself in the cellar, and in the 
daylight of July may sit in darkness, not because the sun 
has stopped shining, but because he chooses to take a seat 
in the cellar. A -man may keep out of the way of God's 
mercy, may hide himself from God's pity, may roof himself 



Why We Pray. 241 

in from God's love, may descend into the vaults of human 
ignorance or sin, and stay there, and the changeless love 
and light will still burn and glow over all the world, though 
he has made them nothing to him. 

In prayer, as we have said, a man takes a certain posi- 
tion toward the unchangeable God. He unbars his heart, 
throws wide the gates of the soul, opens up its inmost rooms, 
and turns toward the light and the blessing, toward the 
descending pity, mercy, and love. Prayer holds him in that 
attitude. There is its blessing. His soul lies open to God 
as the fallow field to the sunshine and the rain. Whether 
he get the specific blessing he asks or not, whether he is 
saved from the present pressing misery or not, is, perhaps, 
of the least importance. The great good is that he shall 
always stand as he stands now, facing God upon his knees, 
all open to the descending blessings. This is the relation 
that he occupies who prays. It is easy to see it is a rela- 
tion which comes from change in him, and yet his change 
has, as far as he is concerned, change-d God. 

Again, a man w^ho does not pray closes his soul's doors 
against heaven, shuts his heart up against the ever-flowing 
love and pity, roofs himself over against the light and the 
dew. He clearly takes another relation to God. It, too, 
is a relation which comes from change in him, and yet, 
practically, as far as he is concerned, it has changed God. 

The change which the Christian seeks to make by prayer 
is this change of relation. It is sufficient. He approaches 
God on the side of His love and mercy, and finds His love 
and mercy in consequence. He seeks to live with a corres- 
pondence fixed between him and God, which shall bear 
messages of pity and help and fatherly care. He considers 
prayer not only a religious duty, but a thing most rational, 
sensible, and natural, and wonders that men allow them- 
selves to be cheated in religion by sophistries at which they 
would laugh in life. 



A SAVAGE WORLD. 

THE one unchangeable thing on earth is human nature. 
Under all guises it is the same. The heart of one 
man is the heart of all. In Roman toga or bobtail coat, in 
Greek pallium or Turkish caftan, in turban or chimney-pot 
hat, man is the same. The brotherhood, the family type 
and character, run through all. The ethnologist's dream of 
a half dozen or a whole score or hundred of groups of crea- 
tion, and separate families, may answer for the physiologist 
or anatomist, who is learned in the measurement of skulls 
and the flexure of shin-bones, but it will never go down 
with the psychologist, the student of the human soul and 
spirit, who finds man the same, no matter what clothes he 
wears, what language he speaks, or what the measurement 
of his tibia. 

We have been crying with a thousand voices about our 
great advances in the nineteenth century ; about our wis- 
dom, our progress, our amazing improvements upon our 
fathers. We have said to ourselves that we have outgrown 
the barbarisms and madnesses of the past ; that we are too 
wise in these days to ruin ourselves with the follies that 
drove the world frantic ; that we, at least, see that human 
good is the end of all wise effort ; that human life is price- 
less, and that men are no longer to be driven at the word of 
king or kaiser. We have claimed that, at least in this wise 
country, men have begun to exercise their reason and claim 
their rights ; that now they can be appealed to on grounds 
of reason, ruled by right motives, enlightened to understand 
their interests, and trusted to have those interests control 
them. 



A Savage World. 24^ 

What an absurdity seems all this talk in the face of 
facts. There was our own war — " causeless," as we were 
fond of saying — " the most causeless in the history of the 
world," as the newspaper and stump rhetoric told us ten 
thousand times. Here is the European war, just closed, 
more causeless still, — all reason against it, none for it ; more 
causeless than its predecessor, the Crimean war, which was 
a pure blunder all through. And in the year 187 1, the 
business of all the States of Europe, the special business of 
England, the freest and most enlightened of them all, is to 
see how best and most readily a few hundred thousand men 
may contrive to kill or maim as many as possible out of a 
few other hundred thousand, their enemies. 

France is, in some respects, the foremost nation in the 
world, — certainly so in what is called civilization. Prussia 
is the foremost in general education. There is not a soldier of 
hersf we dare say, who cannot read and write good German. 
Masters in every department of human knowledge, philoso- 
phers, philologists, Greek critics, Sanscrit scholars, meta- 
physicians, naturalists, have worn spiked helmets. And 
these two nations, so endowed, have devoted their entire 
resources, for several months, to shooting, stabbing, killing, 
and maiming the men of the other, as if that were the sole 
business for which nations exist. 

The story reads like a page out of Caesar's '^ Commen- 
taries," illuminated now, however, by the glare of bursting 
bombs and the flash of rifled cannon. Ariovistus might 
change places with Kaiser William. He would find him- 
self as much at home among the Germans of the nine- 
teenth century as among those of the century before the 
first. 

Civilization is a matter of clothes. The Celts of Napo- 
leon are the Celts of Brennus. The Germans of Moltke 
are the Germans of Clovis. " Scratch a Russian, and you 
find a Tartar underneath." Scratch the civilized European, 
of any nation, and the face of his great-grandfather — savage 



244 Copy. 

Celt, savage Goth, savage Sc.avon — glares at you from 
beneath the- brim of a modern hat. 

The last few years have dispelled the dreams of the 
amiable sentimentalists who told us the millennium had 
come in on an express train, announced beforehand by 
electric telegraph. The passions of the noble savage still 
remain in the man of Berlin and the man of Paris; and 
burning villages, wasted fields, murdered peasantry, widows 
wailing in roofless houses, and fatherless children crying 
for bread in the shivering cold of December, 1870, are the 
proofs that the civilized men of this century are the chil- 
dren of the men that burned and plundered and made 
" requisition " under Alaric and Attila. 

It is the hard fact, and the world must accept it, that 
man under his changed clothes is the same that he always 
was; that wars are the expression of his innate savagery; 
that, after all, he holds his own in this world against his 
enemies by the strong hand and the sharp steel. 

Our material progress, instead of softening the savagery 
of the fighting animal, has but given him more terrible 
weapons to destroy. In the old days it was but clumsy, 
slow, unsatisfactory work, after all. There was a limit to 
the ruin. An army could march only a few miles in a day, 
do its utmost. It could only kill or burn at close quarters. 

We have improved on all that. We can whirl it along 
now at forty miles an hour, thanks to our railroads, and it 
can set a city on fire at five miles' distance, and kill a man, 
or even a child on its mother's bosom, at the same. The 
knowledge and the resources of our civilization, turned in 
the direction of destruction, make the wars of our fore- 
fathers like the mere quarrelling of unruly children. 

Do we complain of all this ? We may if we choose. 
But there is no profit in that. The fact will not be com- 
plained out of existence. But one thing can be put out of 
existence, and ought to be, and that is the notion that 
material advancement, increased knowledge of nature and 



A Savage World. 245 

her resources, increased control over them, increased use of 
them, are to mend the world and deliver humanity. 

Such a notion, set forth as the gospel of wisdom, by a 
man like Mr. Huxley, in a late " lay-sermon," is ludicrous 
enough in view of the terribly real thing, — the "' lay-sermon " 
emphasized with cannon-shot, and delivered in the light of 
burning towns, which Bismarck has been preaching across 
the Channel to England and all the world. 

The extent to which sentimentalism may beguile a man 
who thinks himslf all the time a hard materialist is indeed 
amusing. The savans have been enthusiastically studying 
nature. They have told us — at least Mr. Huxley has — that 
physical studies are the only ones worth studying; they 
have promised that such studies would make the world a 
wise and happy world, and now here come two of the fore- 
most peoples in just those studies, and exhaust their whole 
science and skill in the work of killing each other. 

A man's clothes do not change him. To ride on an 
express train does not change him. To shoot an enemy at 
half a mile with a needle-gun, instead of at fifty yards with 
an arrow, does not change him. To know all about the 
"chalk formation," and the "drift," does not change him. 
In all essentials he may remain a savage still, improved on 
his father only so far as that he may do more ruin in a day 
than his father could in a year; that he can exceed him in 
destruction, as William, at the head of modern-educated 
Prussians, exceeds Clovis at the head of his savage 
Germans. 

To mend matters in a world that, in the red light of 
burning French villages, is but a savage world still, we must 
get nearer to a man than his coat. We must mend humanity 
itself. Christianity cannot safely surrender her business 
into the hands of the chemists and geologists. 



RELIGION AND LUNACY. 

SOME time since we saw, in a Philadelphia paper, an 
account of an unfortunate case of insanity. A Metho- 
dist preacher and his wife had been attending a camp-meet- 
ing, held, as it was said, in the interests of Perfectionism 
(a new " ism " among the Methodists), and had been greatly- 
excited during the prolonged exercises. They came into 
Philadelphia, and both went raving mad in the omnibus, 
the woman throwing her false teeth out of the window, and 
both shouting and gesticulating wildly. In that condition 
the two unfortunates wandered about the city, until picked 
up and cared for by the police. It was stated that the 
gentleman had been, for many years, a useful preacher and 
missionary in his denomination. He and his wife are now, 
probably, lunatics for life. 

It is a delicate subject, and one which the physicians 
have been rather chary of handling, — this subject of insanity 
from religious excitement. In the tables in the introduction 
to the United States census for i860, in the volume on 
population, setting aside the causes of ill-health and intem- 
perance, religious excitement is given as the most prevalent 
cause of insanity ; and between religious excitement and 
intemperance as causes, the difference is very slight. In 
five asylums for the insane, tabulated on page 89, the insane 
from intemperance are eight hundred and twelve, and those 
from religious excitement, seven hundred and forty. 

It thus appears from the official data, collected by the 
officers of the United States, and published by authority, 
that one of the most prevailing causes of lunacy in this 



Religion and Lunacy. 247 

country is excitement caused by a certain type of religion. 
This fact is so striking, that the report goes on to dilate 
upon the matter, though with considerable trepidation. It 
gives four principal methods by which the religious senti- 
ment is excited into insanity. 

^^ First. By those extraordinary and spasmodic efforts 
which occur in all sections of the country, which are not 
restricted to any one sect or denomination, and are doubt- 
less conceived in a spirit of benevolence; yet in which, to 
say nothing of the character of the exercises, the excite- 
ment, both mental and corporeal, is long continued, and 
necessarily produces nervous exhaustion, — the condition 
most favorable for an attack of insanity." 

That is to say, the first and most prolific cause of in- 
sanity from diseased action of the religious emotions, is 
the revival, so called. The two cases mentioned above 
are directly in point. The camp-meeting, whatever else it 
did, drove those two unhappy people mad. 

In speaking of the physical demonstrations which attend 
revivals, and are generally considered as evidences of the 
depth and thoroughness of " the work," the report says : 

" It is probably not generally known that many of the 
physical demonstrations, such as spasms, convulsions, and 
trances — phenomena which sometimes occur in religious 
assemblies of Christians, and are often attributed to a 
supernatural source — ai^e perhaps still more frequent among 
pagans. 

" In congregations of Howling Dervishes, one of the 
minor denominations of Mohammedanism, they are quite 
common ; and we have the authority of the converted 
Brahmin, Gangoola^ for the assertion that they are not in- 
frequent among the Buddhists of his native country. 

"There are, upon the records of our hospitals, cases, 
the circumstances of which, had they occurred in Central 
Africa or New Zealand, and been known in this country, 
would have awakened many an expression of sorrow and 



248 Copy. 

pity for the superstition and fanaticism of the benighted 
heathen." 

All this, of course, though not generally known, is never- 
theless very well known, and has been long known, and a 
deal besides of the same kind, by educated men. The very 
same demonstrations, convulsions, trances, eager shoutings, 
frenzied fervor, and the rest, are found in all forms of re- 
ligion now, as they may be found in all forms of religion 
past. They existed among the ancients in the worship of 
Bacchus and Cybele, in the mad orgies of the Bona Dea, 
and in the "mourning for Tammuz." They exist among 
Mohammedans, Buddhists, and Brahmins, as well as among 
the wild Indian and the native African now. The "medi- 
cine " of the one, and the " obeah " of the other, most people 
have heard of. They are found, too, all down the middle 
ages, among the various schools of Manichean heretics; 
and, in our own time, have broken out among the Roman 
Catholic " Convulsionaries " of France, — the continuation 
only of an experience common enough in the monasteries 
of Europe and Asia ages ago. 

This form of religion is not, therefore, by human expe- 
rience, peculiar to Christianity. It is not, in its origin or 
development, connected with any known principle or doc- 
trine of Christianity. It is something in human nature 
itself, which shows itself in precisely the same way under 
all forms of religious belief. 

The direct tendency of it is to insanity. It consists in 
the temporary dethronement of the judgment and the will. 
The Pythoness of Delphi went into an ecstasy under the 
influence (as the priests claimed) of Apollo. Her reason 
and will were, for the time, dethroned. She was possessed 
and controlled — or at least claimed to be — by another rea- 
son and another will. The " Hurler," or " Howling Der- 
vish," mentioned above, by mere gesticulation and force of 
bellowing, works himself into a frenzy, in which he is no 
longer his own master. Will and judgment are, for the 



Religion and Lunacy. 249 

time, gone. He cannot control himself. He knows not 
what he is doing or saying, until the physical collapse comes 
and goes, and he returns to himself, weak and dazed. 

The same phenomenon, as the United States census 
officially informs us, and has been often noted by physiolo- 
gists and physicians, appears in the excitement of the 
revival. The subjects of that excitement are often tempo- 
rarily irresponsible. They are carried out of themselves, 
in many cases, beyond the control of their own judgment or 
will, and know not what they do or say. 

This, to be sure, is not always the case. Many times the 
matter goes through its course without any physical demon- 
strations. But just in proportion to the intensity and fervor 
of the revival are the participants brought to the verge of 
losing self-control and guidance. Indeed, all the arrange- 
ments are designed to bring them to this verge, and to carry 
them over ; and if they are not brought thither and carried 
over, in cases not a few, " the effort " is not considered suc- 
cessful or sufficiently blessed. 

A man who puts himself in the way of having reason and 
will dethroned for any length of time whatever, or who volun- 
tarily dethrones them himself, by the temporary insurrection 
of any passion or emotion whatever, is, for the time, insane, 
and is courting and inviting permanent insanity. 

The healthy condition of the human mind is that in which 
judgment decides and will executes. A man is responsible, 
because he is a creature made with a judgment and a will. 
These are the ruling powers, and are to control and guide 
the entire realm of the nature. The healthiest and best nat- 
ure is that in which all passions, emotions, and feelings are 
controlled and governed by these royal powers of humanity. 
It is the sad condition of the insane that these powers are 
helpless. They are swept away and lost in the rebellion of 
the lower mob of appetites, fancies, or passions. The insane 
man has cunning, but not judgment. He has obstinacy often, 
but no will. He can argue often, but he cannot reason. 



250 Copy. 

"Anger is a short madness." We read that old Greek 
saying, years ago, as an exercise. And drunkenness is a short 
madness too. And the intoxication of oj^ium is another form. 
Any emotion or any influence which usurps control over the 
man, to the extent of destroying his judgment or his will, 
produces, while it lasts, insanity pure and simple. The only 
difference between a man under any such influence, and the 
confirmed lunatic, is only that, in the first case, the condition 
terminates usually when the exciting cause is removed. But 
continue the condition — let that become permanent — and 
you have permanent insanity. 

It is easy to see, therefore, why ''religious excitement," 
as it is called, is found to be one of the most fruitful causes 
of lunacy. The condition sought, and even desired and 
prayed for as a blessing, is a condition wherein the nature is 
seized and possessed by an emotion which displaces will and 
judgment for the time. The man gives himself up utterly to 
emotions, and finds delight and happiness therein. For it is 
one of the sad results of our natural condition of anarchy, 
that the fallen and disordered nature takes delight in discord 
and lawlessness. It makes no difference that those emotions 
are religious. They, equally with other emotions that usurp 
sovereignty, displace, for the time, the divinely appointed 
rulers of the nature. The man is, therefore, for a time, con- 
trolled by passion — religious passion be it — still passion. 
He is, for the time, in the condition of the insane. 

The excitement terminates, however, because its causes 
terminate, and the normal condition is again resumed. Un- 
fortunately, at times, the excitement is too greatly prolonged, 
or the causes are brought to bear upon a nature too excit- 
able ; and the result is, that the abnormal condition becomes 
permanent. The man goes away as excited as ever. His 
excitement does not cease on leaving the causes which 
produced it, and we have another case of " insanity from 
religious excitement," and another inmate of an asylum. 

We, of course, are saying nothing here against earnestness 



Religion and Lunacy. 251 

or godly zeal ; against that zeal that is with knowledge, 
that enlightened Christian fervor, the warmth and glow of 
which adds life to all true Christian living. This is one 
thing, and a thing totally different from that about w^hich we 
have written here. 

This, which in its highest and most perfect manifestations, 
develops into insanity and commits its subject, wrecked in 
his inner nature, to the safety of an asylum, is no part of 
Christianity at all. Christianity is to be held responsible for 
no results of this sort. Christ's religion is to produce per- 
fect sanity — perfect wholeness ; a royal will guiding the en- 
tire nature at peace and rest, under a conscience declaring 
the unerring law of God in all its utterances. 



SUNDAY AND SUICIDE. 

THERE is no one thing that kills, exhausts, or sends to 
the lunatic asylum more of the active and strong men 
of this country than the breach of the fourth commandment. 

"He kept no Sunday." You may safely write that 
epitaph over hundreds of graves that will be dug this year 
for strong men cut down in their prime ; for ambitious, 
prosperous, influential men, cut off in the midst of the race 
of life. The doctors will say, "softening of the brain," 
"paralysis," "heart disease," "nervous exhaustion," — there 
are a dozen medical names for the cause of the " sad and 
untimely decease of our prominent fellow-citizen, Mr. 
Blank." But, sifted to the bottom, the real fact was, Mr. 
Blank killed himself by breaking Simday. There are suicides 
in scores where no apparent cause exists for what the news- 
papers call "the rash act." The man was doing well. His 
business was prospering. His family relations were pleasant 
and affectionate. One day he puts an end to himself, no 
man can tell why, least of all the solemn coroner's jury, who 
return the usual owl-wise verdict, — " Temporary insanity." 
Searched to the bottom, the matter will yield this verdict, — 
" Died of working on Sundays." 

No law of God is arbitrary. It is for man's good that 
God has established all His statutes. Clear as that truth is 
about them all, it is especially clear about the day of rest. 
" The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sab- 
bath." And if it was made for man anywhere, it was 
surely made for him in these United States. Our life is 
more intense than any the world has yet known. The 



Sunday and Suicide. ^53 

movement of all things is with express-train speed. We are 
all in the whirl together. It takes every faculty a man pos- 
sesses to enable him to hold his own. Striving to get on, 
striving to keep square up to the front with the army of 
com23etitors, a man is compelled to use every power 
*to the fullest. It makes little difference what his call- 
ing may be, the pressure is about the same in all. The 
man who will succeed — who will even fairly hold his 
own — must accept the necessity of anxious, ceaseless, 
never-ending work. Things will not wait for him. He 
cannot sit by the river's brink, waiting till the stream 
runs dry. He must ford or swim or get a raft or " his own 
canoe," — he must force a passage somehow. And this 
necessity is brought before every young man in the land by 
practice and by precept. It is wonderful how early the 
American boy learns the lesson of the country, and under- 
stands he is to make his own way and found his own 
fortune. His school-lessons suggest the work. His very 
copy-book phrases are spurs to ambition. The "pieces " he 
" speaks " at school or college are inflammatory appeals to 
him to make his own mark, and be " somebody " in his day. 
The fact that there is nothing not open to him, no success, 
no place, no fortune, impossible of attainment, is itself a 
motive to drive him on to any exertion. And when he 
enters on active life, he finds all about him under the same 
influence as himself. There is no fortune sure, no place 
fixed, no class with a defined and permanent position. All 
are competitors. There are millions in the race with him. 
Time is money. Time is success. Time is fortune, or 
place, lost or won. So he cannot ride too fast. His horse 
is never as swift as a good horse should be. The express- 
train does not carry him on his journey by a half-hour as 
soon as it might. His meals are a hindrance, and sleep is 
an impertinence unless he can enjoy it in a car going forty 
miles an hour. 

As he works in this mad, restless way, so, in the same 



2 54 Copy. 

way, he takes his relaxations. His enjoyments must be 
intense, highly seasoned, of the " fast " character of which 
his working life consists. The brain, fired to fever-heat by 
incessant, restless, anxious work, seeks relief in pleasures 
quite as fevered. When he turns to enjoy life, it is with the 
same eager haste and greed with which he toils for the* 
means of enjoyment. 

So our people burn the candle at both ends. Nervous 
diseases, diseases which affect the brain, the physicians tell 
us, are becoming the most common. So, sudden deaths, 
deaths by paralysis, death from softening of the brain, as it 
is called, are the common exits of our most prominent men. 
Business men, statesmen, lawyers, clergymen, students, they 
are getting, in America, into a habit of going out at a 
moment's warning, dropping dead as they stand, in a way 
that has never been known before. The probabiHties that 
any prominent man, in any walk of life, will die in his bed, 
in a ripe old age in these United States, are daily becoming 
rarer. 

There are reasons enough given for this state of things, 
we say, but they all resolve themselves at last into the same, 
— overwork The men have no Sabbaths, — no rests at all. 
It is one perpetual workday, and when they seek for enjoy- 
ment it is enjoyment of that fierce, restless kind, — late hours, 
hot suppers, gas-flaming theatres, the spectacular drama, 
the gambling-table often; ''amusements," so called, which 
keep the nerves on the same tension, and inflame still more 
the feverish and restless brain. The calm quiet of rational 
social enjoyment, the sports of the children at home, the 
soothing intercourse of domestic life, the peace of intellect- 
ual relaxation with genial books or intelligent friends, pall 
on the jaded taste. Intense excitement, new sensations, are 
essential elements in what Americans miscall amusements. 
And so comes the overwork upon the nerves and brain. 
There is no rest for them day or night. 

Now and then there is enough of toughness in the con- 



Sunday and Suicide. 255 

stitutional fibre, enough of steel and whalebone derived from 
hard-working parents, the children of the soil, to carry a 
man through this sort of life to a reasonable old age. But 
these are exceptional cases, and they are daily growing more 
exceptional. The children of these fathers and mothers, 
whose nerves are raw to the touch, and whose brains are in 
a restless buzz all their lives, are showing themselves true 
to the inevitable natural law. 

It was to meet just this sort of blunder in human life 
that the Lord gave His seventh day of rest. He knew the 
constitution of the creature He had made, and did not order 
him to do no work on that day because it is at all necessary 
to the great God that men should work or not work, but 
because it is absolutely essential to the well-being of man 
that he should rest the tired hands and calm the fevered 
brain. 

As a matter of fact, there is no rest, no relaxation, so 
utter as that offered by a well-kept Sunday. This is simply 
a fact which no physiologist will deny. There is perfect rest 
and quiet for the body, and, to the worker with his hands, 
that may be the main point. But there is far more than 
this. The mind is called away from all its cares and all its 
common vulgar interests. A new set of thoughts and inter- 
ests are presented. It is lifted out of the office and the 
street and the market-place, — out of its narrowness, its 
isolated cares, and put on the broad ground of universal 
human interests, on its brotherhood toward men and its 
sonship toward God. The sordid cares of the hour are all 
forgotten. The dust and heat and glare and restlessness of 
a hurrying life give place to thoughts of the great peace 
of God. The man is called to rise out of the changing 
into the unchanging, out of the temporary into the eternal, 
out of the low into the infinitely lofty, out of the strife into 
the deep calm of the eternal peace, out of the smoke and 
dust of earth into the blue abysses of everlasting glory and 
calm. The holy influences fall upon the waiting, open soul 



256 Copy. 

like a benediction. Sunday becomes the crown and glory 
of the week. It is the day of peace, the day of highest 
thoughts, the day for home and Church and the social 
greeting of friends ; the freeman's day amid the week's 
slavery ; the one day which God gives as a badge and sym- 
bol of that liberty which Christ bought for the captives of 
the world and time. 

A well-kept Sunday, therefore, perfectly meets the want 
of the modern man. It offers him just the rest which he 
requires. There is no relaxation so complete as that which 
presents thoughts and interests utterly different from those 
with which a man is commonly engaged, and the loftier 
those thoughts and the higher those interests, the better. 
The jaded faculties never enjoy such perfect rest as when 
another set of faculties are called into play and exercise 
while the tired ones sleep in calm. 

We are not going now on the theological argument for 
Sunday ; we leave that entirely untouched, except in so far 
as we recognize the truth that good theology is good sense, 
and that the requirements of a true religion are founded on 
the surest basis of the eternal fitness of things. And we 
say, then, that never, more than in this country and at this 
time, was Sunday an essential element in human life for its 
well-being; and not, be it marked, the Continental Sunday 
of military reviews, brass-bands, and beer-gardens, nor the 
old Jewish ^' Sabbath " of the Puritan, with its stern and 
funereal gloom, but the Christian and Churchly Lord's Day, 
the home and Church Sunday, the cheerfullest and bright- 
est of all the seven, when the old primeval curse, ^' In 
the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread," is suspended 
for the sons of Adam, and they stand on the earth Christ's 
emancipated freemen. 

It is the neglect of this provision of God that is the root- 
cause of the deaths and suicides and insanities from over- 
work which shock us almost daily in the current items of 
news. 



Sunday and Suicide. 257 

Men are making the stupid blunder of supposing they 
need no rest, or, in a revulsion from the gloomy " Sabbath '* 
of a Puritan home, they are turning Sunday into a day of 
"amusements," which fever and jade and kill worse than 
any amount of labor. 

There is no escape from the inevitable laws of life. A 
man cannot work seven days instead of six, with the inten- 
sity with which he must work in this country, without 
paying the penalty some tim He may stimulate, for 
awhile, the weary powers of brain and nerve by the common 
method of pouring down alcohol in some of its shapes, in 
quantities to suit. But this only postpones the inevitable 
wakening. It makes the blow come only more surely and 
more suddenly. Some day the merchant's eyes blur over 
the columns of his ledger. The figures wil] not, for the 
first time in his life, come right ; and he goes home, and the 
family physician takes the law into his own hands, and 
prescribes a year or two of Sundays together, — or, softening 
of the brain, just as the merchant prefers. Some day the 
prosperous lawyer sinks confused in the middle of a success- 
ful speech, and can no more command his thoughts than if 
he were an imbecile. Some day the statesman drops in the 
Senate, or in the office, and paralysis enforces a series of 
Sundays in which neither hand nor foot nor brain can do 
aught but rest until the long rest closes all. Or, some day, 
a pistol-shot or a sudden insanity winds up a life that a 
man stupidly thought could be profitably lived in defiance 
of the laws of God and his own constitution. 

We are not placing this thing on the highest motive, 
because the highest motive is powerless to touch the trans- 
gressors. We only say the transgression does not pay. We 
assure every man who reads this, that common-sense and 
well-ascertained scientific truth perfectly agree with relig- 
ion, and that it does not pay to work on Sundays; 
that, on the other hand, it is the most reckless waste 
of time, the maddest extravagance in which a man can 



258 Copy. 

indulge. If any man doubts the clergyman, he may 
appeal to the physician, and we are very certain the 
two will perfectly agree, — Sunday work is suicide. And 
by working on Sunday we do not mean only the formal 
going to the office or counting-room, and the set working 
there as on other days. There is not so much of this done, 
after all. We mean the carrying a man's business about 
with him on that day ; the taking it home and poisoning the 
fireside with it ; the taking it to church and poisoning the 
church with it. This is the shape, usually, which Sunday 
work takes, — its insiduous and cheating shape. The man 
sits among his children and calculates to-morrow's bargains. 
He sits in his church-pew and adds up the columns in his 
ledger. He is speculating about the Monday's market 
while he holds his Prayer Book open. He carries his 
sordid, vulgar worries, his weary unrest, his fierce ambition, 
his greed, his plotting, into church or home, and spoils God's 
best blessing by his thick ignorance and obstinacy. 

It is time to warn ourselves, all. We must live our lives 
under the laws God has given ; and a man may be very 
certain that he gains, in the long run, in power, in length of 
life, in force of brain, by using the Sunday for the end for 
which God gave it. The atmosphere of worship, of prayer 
and praise and benediction, of lofty and grand truths and 
interests, is a healthy and refreshing atmosphere to the 
world-weary brain and heart. 

No man can carry his business, his bargains and sales, 
his worldly ambitions and pleasures and work about him 
seven days and nights every week, without committing not 
only a crime, but a blunder. 



AN EXPLODED BIT OF NONSENSE. 

THERE is nothing which so much injures religion as 
the follies committed by foolish good people in its 
name ; and in no Christian land are such follies more com- 
mon than in our own. Men have so lost all knowledge 
of the true methods of Christian working, and in the 
individualism and self-pleasing of sectarianism have been so 
compelled each to invent his plans for himself, that no- 
where so perfectly as in our own place and time have 
inexperience and self-opinion and misguided rashness so 
wasted the zeal and energy of Christian men. 

In every short space of time some patent plan is in- 
vented, some new contrivance devised, to effect some great 
work in moral or religious reform. Now it is one scheme 
and now another, now this movement and now that. For 
the time it has seemed as if it would carry everything 
before it. It has been blustering and boastful. It has 
prided itself on the fact that it is a new invention. It has 
claimed that for this country old methods and tried plans 
are out of place. It has set up its organs, filled the press 
with its doings, denounced all sober-minded people who 
would not go with it as traitors to God and man, and at 
last has gone out in unsavory smoke, and left the world 
where it found it. And such things have done untold harm. 
They have created distrust of the common instrumentalities 
of the Gospel. Their friends and patrons have even 
sneered at and depreciated these to magnify their new 
invention. And still more, the unwisdom and failure of 
these schemes have created distrust of religion itself, and 



26o Copy. 

have made men lose faith in the power of Christianity to do 
the work for which God sent it. 

A striking case of this folly, which misleads well-meaning 
people and disgusts many thoughtful men with the very 
name of religion, has lately worked itself out in New York. 
An enterprising gentleman starts, in that city, a monthly 
paper, of the poor, cheap, and sensational kind, for young 
men, as it is claimed. Something out of the common order 
is needed to float off the enterprise successfully. And one 
of those gentlemen called " Bohemians," ^'penny-a-liners,*' 
etc., a manufacturer of sensations to order at so much a 
column, furnishes for the new enterprise an account of a 
visit to a disreputable den in a low street somewhere in the 
great city, the keeper of which he calls "the wickedest 
man in New York." 

In the first place, the name is a false bit of humbug. 
How does this littei^ateur know who is the wickedest man in 
New York.^ It would be quite as reasonable to seek for 
that distinguished character up town as down town, in a 
" palatial residence " as in a " den " on Water street. The 
name betrays the cant and humbug which confounds 
respectability with virtue, and clean linen with good morals. 
But the sensational contributor is not the only person who 
has that amount of sincerity and insight. Immediately a 
number of enthusiastic gentlemen conclude that, having 
found " the wickedest man in New York," they will convert 
him. 

To effect this purpose, they get him and his name and 
his business published from end to end of the land. Illus- 
trated papers delight the families of the land with broadside 
illustrations of the '' den," and its male and female inmates, 
and with pictures of the "wickedest." The telegraph 
carries accounts of the sayings and doings of this interesting 
individual to all readers. New York is delighted ; she has 
found the wickedest man she can produce, and she is deter- 
mined to show her skill and enterprise by taking him, 



An Exploded Bit of Nonsense. 261 

whether or no, and converting him. Poor New York ! She 
has men in her church-pews on Sundays, well-dressed, 
clean-shaven, and respectable men in her banks, ware- 
houses, and palatial residences, who could give this poor 
wretch the papers are shrieking over ten years' start, and 
then beat him in downright diabolism. But New York is 
cant-ridden, like many another city, — cannot see more than 
skin-deep, has no spiritual insight, poor city ! any way ; and, 
like the rest of her sisters, thinks good houses and well- 
made clothes and Fifth avenue are Christianity, or at least 
good morals. So the good, well-meaning gentlemen, who 
have read the sensation article of the ^enterprising penny- 
a-liner, determine to invade this den, and tackle the wicked- 
est man in his own stronghold. He has no objections to 
the gratuitous advertisement of himself and his business. 
Like all coarse villains he is proud of notoriety, takes a 
pride in being the biggest villain he knows. These weak, 
good folk are flattering his vanity and feeding his love of 
notice. They have come to pray for him here. Common 
doings can convert common sinners, but such grand sinners 
as he must be specially attended to by a score of clergymen 
of all names, and a whole deputation of men and women 
from the various churches of New York. 

Day in and day out this disgusting performance is kept 
up. This coarse, cunning scoundrel, and his sayings and 
doings, and the prospects of his conversion and his notions 
about religion, are trumpeted over the country for the edifi- 
cation of a shocked and grieved community. He is a hero 
in villany. The largest and most important villain in his 
own half-drunken eyes in all New York — the wickedest 
man extant, and therefore the most important, a man for 
whom all the preachers are praying and all the Churches 
pleading — he is master of the situation, elevated by pious 
simplicity on account of his very brutality into heroism, 
and all the preachers and all the papers are ministering to 
his ignorant vanity and conceit. 



a62 Copy. 

Meanwhile, other unsavory wretches of his type, keepers 
of other dens in his neighborhood, are jealous of their 
compeer's fame. They, too, want to get into the papers, and 
have themselves advertised as important personages in the 
kingdom of Belial. They come forward and delude the 
simple souls of the pious by volunteering the use of their 
various rat-pits, bar-rooms, and saloons for prayer-meetings. 
The pious are deluded. We have glowing accounts of the 
grand work going on in these various dens, and of the dress 
and bearing of their various inmates and proprietors. De- 
cency is paying its tribute to indecency. Virtue is down 
on its knees to vice. . Clean linen is courting the unwashed, 
and the unwashed are the heroes of the hour. So goes on 
the weak farce, till thoughtful, serious people are shamed 
for their kind, and for the very name of religion so dis- 
graced. 

At last the climax comes. The original wickedest man, 
whose conversion has been going on so prosperously, is 
arrested one morning for a robbery committed in his den, 
the scene of all these six weeks' prayer-meetings ; his wife 
and all his hopeful inmates are bundled off to the ^* Tombs " 
together. He, cunning rascal, manages to escape, and the 
humbug is exploded for the present. 

We cannot hope that even this hard lesson will be 
sufficient. The gullibility of human nature is enormous, 
and weakness and cant are large elements in modern relig- 
ionism. Still, it is not too much to hope such perform- 
ances as this last will be sufficient, with reasonable men, to 
justify the Church in doing her work in the old, sober, 
steady way, and in declining to join in any glorification of 
such work as the late Water street business in New York. 
Wicked men are not converted by making their wickedness 
a matter of glorification to begin with. 



GARNISHING SEPULCHRES. 

THE pertinacity with which some men will stick to an 
exploded humbug, and the laborious painfulness 
with which they will repeat, again and again, convicted and 
manifest falsehoods, is a thing to marvel at, were it not a 
thing so common. 

The tercentenary of the death of John Calvin was 
celebrated a few years since. The occasion called out a 
good deal of talk and writing, as such occasions are apt to 
do. Some of this talk and writing was wise, and a great 
deal was otherwise. Of course high glorification over the 
dead lion was to be looked for in many quarters. It came, 
as was expected, and wonderful stuff the most of it turned 
out to be. 

There were great doings in Geneva, the little city that 
Calvin blessed with his live presence. Something in the 
nature of a Romish canonization, or an old heathen apothe^ 
osis, was to have been the order of the day there. It came 
off, undoubtedly, according to programme, and henceforth 
divus Calvinus is duly enthroned. 

We declare freely that we yield to none in our admiration 
of John Calvin. He had several qualities which go to make 
the hero. Strong will, determined purposes, organizing 
power, faith in his own clear brain, logical courage in the 
most unflinching measure, — he had these all, and more 
qualities, to influence and control his kind. Had he been 
endowed with a heart, he would have been a hero indeed. 
But the hero must be loved as well as worshipped, and no 
man was ever yet suspected of loving John Calvin. But 



264 Copv. 

honoring Calvin, as we do, for grand points of character, it 
simply disgusts us to see men huzzaing about his memory, 
and delivering eloquent emptiness over his sepulchre, who 
have cast his doctrine to the winds, and who laugh at the 
faith he would have died for. 

Geneva is a Unitarian city. The father of such Chris- 
tianity as exists there is Servetus, whom Calvin watched 
burning one day in the market-place, — Servetus, the denier 
of the Lord's divinity, the great martyr of Unitarianism. 
For generations Calvin's doctrines have never had a voice 
in Calvin's city. In the church where he preached, not 
only his metaphysics, but the Christian faith itself, has been 
laughed to scorn for years. 

And yet the men who have trampled on his teachings 
and spit upon his faith, gather together to deliver them- 
selves of eloquent babblement over the great reformer's 
grave. It is enough to make his bones writhe in the dust. 
It is the finest specimen of garnishing sepulchres that the 
world has lately seen. The disciples of Servetus gather 
to pronounce orations in praise of John Calvin. They must 
surely have mistaken the grave. 

We say it is simply disgusting to us. If there was any- 
thing true or worthy or wise in Calvin's life, let him be 
praised for it ; but let him not be praised by men who 
declare, their whole lives long, that his doctrine was a lie 
and his faith a cheat. Let not the high-priests in the cere- 
mony of his apotheosis be men whom he would have tied 
to the stake beside Michael Servetus. Let not the place of 
that high ceremonial be the city where his words and works 
are fit objects for sneers and contempt. 

If the Unitarians of Geneva and France are strange 
hierophants at the mysteries of Calvin's canonization, his 
American mystagogues are equally strange. The " Indepen- 
dent '* comes out with two long articles, one to prove he did 
not burn Servetus with his own hands^ and the other a 
general glorification over the wonderful reformer and his 



Garnishing Sepulchres. 265 

"tercentenary." Now, it is needless to say that the "Inde- 
pendent " scOuts Calvinism. There is not one point that 
goes to make up that ism which it does not, we believe, 
deny. But it must find something to say in the hero's 
praise. And what shall it be .^ Why, this : 

" The influence of Calvin upon the progress of the 
Reformation, the establishment of vigorous ecclesiastical 
organizations, and the independence of the Church in its 
relations with the secular power, can scarcely be expressed 
in exaggerated language." 

Then follows the usual hurrah about " liberty," and the 
"Puritans," and "the bleak New England shore," and 
"freedom to worship God," all culminating in that last and 
perfect specimen of humanity, the Boston Unitarian of 
to-day. 

Now, whoever knows anything at all of John Calvin's 
system, knows that he never dreamed of a Church inde- 
pendent of the State. It is just as rational to talk of the 
independence of Church and State being due to Hildebrand. 
It is simply the stupid ignorance of ready writing which 
betrayed the " Independent " into this arrant nonsense. 

Church and State were not separated, in Geneva, by 
Calvin, and they never have been separated. Church and 
State are not separated in Scotland, where the only real 
followers of Calvin are now to be found. As long as Calvin- 
ism was alive. Church and State were united in New 
England. When Calvinism was triumphant in the great 
rebellion, in Old England, it united itself with the State as 
strongly as the episcopacy, which it had driven out by the 
State's power. W^hen the Calvinistic Puritans came to this 
country they carried out Calvin's system to the letter; 
they made the closest union between the Church and the 
State, and "clung to it as to their ark of the covenant." 
Yet, with all these facts patent to the world, the newspapers 
repeat this exploded folly and nonsense, and ask men to 
venerate John Calvin for a system which John Calvin 
12 



266 Copv. 

detested. We have no doubt the Genevese Unitarians, in 
just the same way, claim the reformer as the founder of 
Unitarianism. We believe the Boston Unitarians, with some 
justice, do make the claim. 

John Calvin's theory of Church and State was simply, in 
its main feature, Hildebrand's. Both held that the two 
powers must be united. Both held that the temporal should 
be under control of the spiritual power. Both held that the 
civil power should carry out the demands of the ecclesiasti- 
cal. Calvin labored a lifetime for this, at Geneva, and got 
it fully established. John Knox toiled for the same purpose 
in Scotland, and claimed in old, jDapal, Hildebrandine style, 
the right to excommunicate kings. The Puritans came to 
New England to establish the same system, and succeeded. 
They made the State subordinate to the Church. No man 
could vote, no man could hold office, save a member of the 
Church. 

It was the State, executing the decrees of the dominant 
Church, which burned Servetus for heresy (an ecclesiastical 
offence) at Geneva. It was the State, carrying out the 
demands of the Church, which hung the Quakers, so long 
after, in Massachusetts. 

There is no secret about Calvin's system, or theory, of 
Church and State. All historians give it as we have. All 
men, competent to express an opinion, know it to be so, as 
a notorious matter of fact. Yet, from mere dint of scrib- 
bling whatever crudities may come to hand, about all things 
in the universe, the newspapers represent John Calvin as 
the inventor of the separation between Church and State, 
the founder, too, of universal toleration, and a red-hot 
democrat and universal suffrage man. 

If Calvin is to be canonized, it is clear these are not the 
men to do it. They do not know what he did, or what he 
left undone. The Calvin they talk about is a myth. The 
real man, Jean Cauvin, the Frenchman, was a very large 
specimen of the genus homo in his day, and did a heavy 



Garnishing Sepulchres. 267 

amount of work, which has lasted, with various results, till 
now. But he was not a Unitarian, nor was he a democrat, 
nor a tolerationist, nor a member of Plymouth Church. 
The editor of the " Independent " would have found short 
shrift and hot fire had he written his sensation crudities 
where " the great reformer '* could have got him by the 
collar. 

There are, perhaps, a few thousand people yet living 
who believe his system. It has not, however, been our lot, 
since we were very young, to meet any of them. It is only 
a matter of faith, and not of sight, with us. But certainly 
there are none of them who take the "Independent," or 
belong to the little State Unitarianism of Geneva. But, 
though Calvinism is dead, still we can, we say, honor Calvin. 
And we do ; all the more sincerely, perhaps, because we 
have some small idea of what the man really was, and 
because we honor him for what he did, and not for what he 
would have been burned before doing. 



THE UNHAPPY CHILDREN. 

AMONG other things that a grown man may be thank- 
ful for, these days, is the fact that he is a grown 
man. For it is a terrible thing to be a boy. It is terrible 
in many points of view, and especially terrible in view of 
the enormous production of so-called " children's books," 
which are sent forth in countless bales, hourly, to stuff the 
little intellectual stomachs of the unsuspecting innocents, 
give them incurable spiritual dyspepsia, and addle their 
poor brains for their whole lives. 

For any student of natural history, who has the leisure 
and the patience, and who thinks it worth while, there is a 
wide and new field of investigation open in studying the 
habits and nature of that hitherto undescribed creature, 
the manufacturer of books for children, and especially of 
books for boys. The enormous production of some indi- 
viduals of the species is one of the marvels of nature. 
Book after book, story after story, they come in one end- 
less flood, all as much alike as eggs of the same hen's 
laying. To be sure, there is nothing surprising in that. 
The surprise is about the rapidity with which the stuff 
comes. 

Then the enormous number of people that are at the 
thing is another surprise. Whence do they come } How 
do they grow } By what process. Darwinian or other, is 
one of these amazing mortals that write endlese volumes of 
utterly amazing little stories, all alike, and all equally non- 
sensical, by what process is he produced 1 How came he 
to take that sort of business in hand^s his fit occupation in 



The Unhappy Children. 269 

life ? Does he do anything else ? Or cannot he help him- 
self? Is it a disease in his intellect, and must he drivel out 
books for children or die an untimely death ? 

The world knows very little indeed of this class of its 
inhabitants. They are shy of publicity. Most of them 
take aliases. They are so modest, we suppose, that they 
prefer to do good by stealth, and find it fame. They go 
under the names of "Uncle Jake," or "Aunt Sally." The 
stories are "Cousin Josie's Stories," or "Brother Bill's 
Series," or the " Jenny Jumper Library," " Oliver Optic," 
"Ned Naso," "Fanny Flyaway," or "Rosa Rocker," — so 
the world knows them, and is further astonished at the 
names they call themselves. 

They give forth, all the year, an unfailing supply. They 
have a number of magazines and even weekly papers, we 
believe, devoted to their use, so that any little odd frag- 
ments, in the shape of tales and sketches, may be preserved, 
and the poor children spared no infliction possible. But 
about Christmas and New Year's Day they are in their 
glory. Then come the books, or the sketches they have 
been manufacturing all the year are bound up to pass for 
books, and the shelves of the bookstores are loaded with 
books in green, books in red, books in yellow, books illus- 
trated, and books not illustrated. "Captain Reed," "Major 
Mizzen Rush," " Oliver Optic," and " Sister Suky " are on 
the shelves, in all their glory, and Paterfamilias, and Mater- 
familias, and Brother Harry from the city, and Sister Mary, 
and Cousin John, and uncles and aunts and friends deliver 
the stuff in armfuls to the children, and the poor children 
read — with results. 

Do the givers know, once in a hundred times, what they 
are giving.^ Have they read, or even looked over, the 
intellectual fodder with which they insist on stuffing the 
poor children ? They do the thing in kindness, we doubt 
not, just as we have known old bachelor uncles to stuff their 
unhappy nephews and nieces with chocolate drops and 



270 Copy 

cocoa-nut candy, and all nameless abominations of that 
sort, in perfect kindness. 

Let any sensible father examine the books which will 
be given to his children in this way, and he will find himself 
asking how in the world the poor children, who read these 
things, are saved from idiocy. He is amazed at the recuper- 
ative power of youth, as exhibited in Charley or Harry, 
that, after a course of this diet, continued indefinitely, they 
yet retain sense enough to come indoors during a rain. 

For the stuff is, as a rule, absolute nonsense, lukewarm 
dishwater. We have been at the pains to run through a 
dozen or so of the books that well-meaning friends have 
put into the hands of our own small people since before 
last Christmas, and there are no words in English to do 
justice to their forlorn inanity. And every one of them has 
a moral, too ! The manufacturer tells you, in a preface or 
a postscript, that he " has written his book to teach some 
important truth or some very necessary duty." He is not 
content with writing you that his stupidity is wisdom. He 
has boys that are monstrosities among boys ; girls that no 
mortal ever saw the like of since the world was made ; 
incidents that by no possibility could occur in any country 
or time ; a run of events compared to which Baron Mun- 
chausen's tales are natural probabilities, — and this unreal 
world, and this life all gone crazy, and these people un- 
heard of in any history and unimaginable by any experi- 
ence, are to teach some precious moral, if you will only 
believe the writer ! And he has written this stuff on purely 
moral grounds, and from a deep sense of the duty he owes 
to the rising generation. 

There is scarcely any use of specifying. The entire 
production may be lumped in a mass. There is no age 
against which these people have not made their assault. 
They begin with the very nursery. The very four-year- 
olds must have their exciting little "books for the nursery," 
to stimulate to morbid activity their poor little brains, As 



The Unhappy Children. 27 1 

soon as they are weaned the process is expected to begin. 
It is no longer the soothing rhymes of good old Mother 
Goose that will answer. The baby must have its novel, 
perhaps its series of novels, packed neatly in a box, so that 
it can be supplied by the dozen. And all of its novels 
must have a moral, for we are strong on morals these days. 

As it gets older, say eight or ten, there comes its child's 
paper or magazine, its larger novelette or book of advent- 
ures, to drag the poor creature more heavily still, and swell 
its hydrocephalus head still larger, by morbid stimuli. It 
is living in an unreal world. Its fancy is unnaturally stimu- 
lated. It dreams day-dreams, and loses itself in re very. 
Its poor little nerves are kept upon the stretch day and 
night. And still the supply is unexhausted. The stuff is 
piled in heaps before the poor child, as he or she grows up, 
more and more highly seasoned each year. The books are 
" moral " books indeed, or they are intended to teach 
"scientific truths." But the story must be very highly 
spiced to make the moral go down, and the scientific bits, 
small and cheap as they are, are the parts skipped by the 
inquiring mind. The boy is not to be cheated into science, 
while the hero is hanging by one finger from a perpendicular 
precipice three hundred feet high, or is dancing between the 
horns of a wild buffalo, without his gun, and with his knife 
broken short off at the hilt. He is too eager to find out how 
the eagle came sailing over the cliff, and the hero grasped 
his leg and was let down safely into the valley ; or how, just 
then, a humane tiger sprang upon the flanks of the buffalo 
and saved the hunter. 

Meanwhile the Sunday-school library does its share 
toward helping on the evil, and gives out its religious nov- 
elettes for Sunday reading; so that no day in all the week 
shall be left for the poor child free from the glamour of 
fiction and unreality. 

Then come the "dime novels," — bears, Indians, trappers, 
scouts, etc., for which the highly-spiced adventures of the 



272 Copy. 

respectable " moral " and " scientific '* novels have prepared 
him, and a dime's worth of their astonishing English and 
their unheard-of adventures with panthers and " grizzlies" 
will keep a smart boy going for a day. 

In due time the child takes up the novel of the period. 
He or she has been trained to novel-reading from babyhood. 
Stuffed, stimulated, drugged with novels, moral and immoral, 
religious and rollicking. Sunday novels and week-day 
novels, " one wide wishy-washy flood " has flowed through 
the mind since the poor thing was conscious of a mind, and 
all power of study and serious work, of concentrated thought 
and fixed attention, is washed out, or if not, it is no fault of 
the discipline received. 

The whole thing is evil, and evil only. There is no 
holding parley with it. By every known law of the human 
body, the human intellect, and the human conscience, this 
whole flood of babies' and children's novels and novel- 
ettes is bad, and bad only. They stimulate to precocity. 
They surround the child with an atmosphere of unre- 
ality. They teach it to distrust the common, every-day 
world. They confuse its sense of facts and realities. They 
keep its brain simmering with impossible fancies, they des- 
troy its power for concentrated effort and fixed thought, and 
leave it at last an intellectual inanity. The number of grown 
people, men and women, who have received educational 
advantages, and who are inadequate to the reading of any 
book that requires more thought than one of the common 
railroad novels, is daily increasing. 

It is no wonder. Unless this flood can be stopped; 
unless, at least, we can leave the children some chance to 
grow up without this drugging, it would seem that we may 
look for a generation, at least, with whom reflection or 
serious thought will be impossible. 

The publishers and writers of children's novels have 
become emboldened by long immunity, and they perpetrate 
their atrocities with unblushing audacity. There is no 



The Unhappy Children. 'Z'^ 2> 

absurdity, no extravagance, no insane English, no crazy 
impossibility, they will not dish up for the children. It 
becomes the fathers and mothers to look to this. 

There are a number of healthy old books that never did 
anybody harm, healthy food for the imagination, which needs 
education, like every other power, of course, — " Robinson 
Crusoe," Fouque's wonderful stories, " The Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress," and the rest ; quite enough for that side of the spiritual 
nature till the child is old enough for entrance into the 
enchanted land of the poets, and the great story-tellers of 
the world. 



BYRON AND TENNYSON— AN ILLUSTRATION. 

IT is apt to be the opinion of men, as they grow older, 
that the world is not improving. They cling to the 
memories of their own times, and are prone to fancy that the 
golden age of their youth was also the golden age of the world. 
In those days parents were more careful and children more 
obedient, pastors more faithful and congregations more de- 
vout, sermons more powerful and hearers more teachable, 
and a simple truth and faithfulness ruled among men, which 
is seen nowhere in these degenerate days. 

The glamour of memory goes over all the past, concealing 
all its failures and wrongs, and bringing out into high relief 
all its good things and its beautiful. And yet, if a man be- 
lieve in God, it is almost necessary that he believe also in 
the improvements of time. If a good God is ruling the 
world for His own high and blessed ends, it must follow that 
these ends are brought nearer by every rising and setting 
sun, and that every age is an advance upon its predecessor. 

It may not be seen to be so by very many — there are back- 
ward eddies in the most headlong stream ; but, on the whole, 
every age is an improvement on the age it succeeds, and our 
own day is, after all, the best day the world has yet seen. 

To a man who wants to do good service in his own time, 
we think this faith very essential. One must, to work well, 
have some faith in his work's success. He can work to little 
purpose who labors under the burden of this despair, that 
the new days are always the worst days, and that the world's 
golden age lies behind him. There is more of encourage- 
ment in the hopeful and, we believe, the more reasonable and 



Byron and Tennyson — An Illustration. 275 

Christian faith, that we are but in the darkness ourselves, but 
in a darkness which is only so in comparison with the coming 
day ; that our darkness is the brightness of the dawn to the 
night that lies behind, and that still before us the Eastern 
splendors wait behind the hills. Better than the fathers 
will be, let us trust, in the good government of God, the 
children ; old evil dies, if new evil comes, and the old evil 
is the worst. That it exists in memory only softens its dark 
outlines, while the new evil is present and seen in all its hid- 
eousness. 

It is not right, as it is not wise, to weep and wail over a 
man's own time as if it was the worst time that God has 
made. It is not wise to call our own day the day of sorest 
evil. There are evils in all times, and one age is quite unfit 
to compare its burdens with those of another. But that 
through all times "one increasing purpose runs," and that 
each, as a whole, improves upon the other, prospering by 
the other's faithful work, and taking warning by its failures, 
is the only consistent faith for a man who believes that the 
Lord Jesus is King. 

He has a right to make his own all the hope and courage 
that faith confers. He has the right to do his daily work, 
hard and fruitless as it may seem too often, under the help 
of that high trust. He has the right to strengthen with it his 
own hands and the hands of his fellow-workers. He has no 
right, and he is half a traitor and a coward to preach des- 
pair of his own day, and mourn for the days of the past, — 
days which had their own sore evils, which true men met, 
but which he has forgotten, with the faithful toilers who, by 
conquering those evils, made his own better days possible. 

These thoughts received a freshening in our mind, the 
other day, in connection with two names, — Byron and Ten- 
nyson. They are both poets of a high rank, and that is, with 
another thing, their only likeness. The other thing is that 
they are poets who have had each a peculiar fascination for 
the young. No boy ever read Shakespeare with any real 



276 Copy. 

love or appreciation. He speaks to men. No boy could 
read Dante by choice, as possibly no boy would think of 
reading Wordsworth. But Byron and Tennyson are the 
poets of early life, and somehow fail in fascination as men 
grow old. 

These two men are as wide apart as the poles in charac- 
ter, as they are in the influence and nature of their verse. 
The living poet is a man of the purest and simplest life, his 
home the castle of his affections, the sacred spot in all the 
world. And as his life, so is his verse. Of all he has writ- 
ten, there is not one word that dying he needs to blot, not 
one malignant, envious, unmanly or unclean line. Whatever 
judgment may be pronounced upon his genius, his poetry is 
as pure as the dew upon the English hedge, as fresh and 
clean and healthy as the breeze upon an English down. 
Singing of common life in its commonest forms, or weaving 
into modern measure the dim heroic legends of the Round 
Table, he wears the laurel green as his great predecessor 
yielded it, "who uttered nothing base." There is not, in all 
literature, ancient or modern, a mass of verse so absolutely 
pervaded by the spirit of a perfect purity as the poetry of 
Alfred Tennyson. 

We need not dwell upon the dead poet's life, — its outrage 
on all laws human and divine, its wild passion, its meanness, 
its gaudy affectation, its insincerity even in the cant of vice, 
its hunger for notoriety, its unutterable quackery as well as 
uncleanness. His verse lies before the world, and all the 
world knows what it is, — the glorification of passion, the 
apotheosis of sin ; his best poem a labored infamy, a shame 
to the language in which it is written, the vilest piece of work 
that was ever done in English literature. 

Less than forty years ago no poet, ancient or modern, 
was so read and so quoted among the young men of the day 
as Byron. He dominated over the imaginations of all 
young men who had imagination at all. In institutions of 
learning the student had his Byron to relieve the monotony 



Byron and Tennyson — An Illustration. 2 77 

of his studies. Byron was the heaven-born bard and singer 
who illuminated and illustrated life ; who knew just its mean- 
ing and its value. 

So intense was the fascination, that young men copied 
the poet's oddities, his dress, his manner, his affected cyni- 
cism ; made believe to copy his profligacy, as they did actually 
copy the turn of his shirt collars; and this was the ideal of 
the youth of years ago. Staid gentlemen, now falling into 
the sere and yellow leaf, will remember, perhaps, in their own 
persons, the early fervency of the Byron mania; may not, 
perhaps, have yet recovered from the fascination which this 
interesting personage cast over them ; will remember still 
the copy of his works, much bethumbed, over which they 
were wont to pore as over a new revelation of genius. 

They will also remember what good it did them, and 
what a lofty sort of worship it was, and what a spotless and 
perfect eidolon they bowed their youthful souls before. 

Well, their sons do not read Byron. They may not be 
aware of the fact, but they do not. The poetically given 
youths of the present day are not as their fathers were. To 
them Byron is a good deal of a weary bore. His poem^ are 
not found thumbed in college studies nowadays. No gifted 
youth carries them in his pockets to beguile his leisure. No 
sentimental young person quotes them. They belong to a 
past age, and the names of the productions which set the 
man of sixty wild with delight and excitement are hardly 
known to his son, and, except as a task, his son will scarcely 
think of reading them. 

The poet of the young men now, who take to poetry at 
all, in England or America ; the poet who is loved with 
personal affection, — whose poetry lies on the young man's 
study-table, which he quotes, which he carries, if he carry 
any, and reads an commits, which lingers in his memory 
like the chime of silver bells, which rises to his lips when 
he would express a thought in perfect measure, — is x'\lfred 
Tennyson. Mark it at the next college commencement 



278 Copy. 

you attend. The boys will quote verse in their speeches. 
It is in them to do it. If you miss the lines from " In Me- 
moriam," the subtle music of the verses from " Enid " or 
"Vivien," we shall confess our astonishment at a new thing. 
On the whole, we think we should prefer to know that our 
son took for the bard of his veneration Alfred Tennyson 
rather than Lord Byron, and we think most fathers will agree 
with us in this respect. And if it be not exactly fair to as- 
suQie that there is as wide a difference in the times as in the 
poets, still we cannot help thinking that the fact that " In 
Memoriam " and the " Idyls of the King" are the pet poetry 
of the young in 1870, is no sign that our year is worse than 
1830, when the pet poetry of the same class was " Manfred " 
and " Don Juan." 



OUR PREMIUM LIST. 

THERE is complaint of the degradation of literature, 
and much of the complaint is well founded. With 
a great deal that is sound and wise, there is vastly more 
written and printed that is unsound and foolish ; and 
naturally enough, for there never were so many readers as 
now. And these readers have no cultivation, as a mass, 
beyond the ability to read. They have no power to judge 
or compare what they read, or one very limited. Having 
no capacity for intellectual exertion, in any literary line at 
least, they read to be amused. Whenever the reading is 
out of the line of direct material interests ; whenever it 
goes beyond the newspaper and the market reports and 
some partisan discussion of the politics of the hour, it is a 
reading for amusement, for rest, for forgetfulness. 

Novel-reading has, therefore, risen to such huge propor- 
tions. It is the unreal world into which, for fifty cents or 
less, a man may enter, and forget the real world — small and 
mean and material, in which he lives — and be amused and 
rested. Novel-reading is the lotus-eating of the nineteenth 
century. The fanciful world of the novelist is now that 

•* Hollow land, in which 
Men live, and He reclined." 

And such is the demand for admission, that a large number 
of ladies and gentlemen make their living, and some of 
them get rich, by telling tales that never end, over and over 
again, to the grim materialists of England and America, 
and so cheating them into a realm of fancy where all things 
have suffered change. 



2 So Copy. 

In the old days there were fewer readers, and a large 
proportion of those who read did so to learn. Reading 
meant, for a larger number, Avork and thought and intel- 
lectual activity. For the mass, now, it has come to mean 
release from activity, rest from work, and entire absence of 
thought. The purpose of the writer now is to relieve his 
reader from all necessity of trouble or care. He writes to 
amuse. He writes to induce forgetfulness. Literature, 
more and more, is becoming a mere means of amusement 
for an idle hour, and the best amuser is the most successful 
writer. 

This will mend itself in time, we doubt not. We are in 
a transition time. Masses have learned to read who have 
not learned to think. "All print is open to them," and 
they, naturally, in the abundance of their new riches, select 
the print that gives them the most enjoyment. The time 
will come when increasing numbers of readers will see that 
writing and printing were not given merely to report the 
markets, the stupid speeches in Congress, and the account 
of the last prize fight, nor to provide for the endless pro- 
duction of love-stories, but that with both, thought is con- 
nected, and was meant to be, — something of intellectual 
and spiritual value and interest to the human race. But we 
are not writing to complain of the general degradation of 
literature into a mere amusement for laziness and ignorance, 
which is one broad feature of its present condition. The 
mention of degradation carried us away. 

Our design is to speak of one form of that degradation 
which can be removed, and which ought to be removed, and 
for the denunciation and destruction of which all educated 
people ought to determine to act together like brethren of 
one family. 

There are among us a class of periodicals — " story papers '* 
— which are the lowest form in which printed matter makes 
its appearance. We have no notion of the kind of people 
who write the stuff that is in these papers, or, indeed, 



Our Premium List. 28 1 

whether it was ever written at all. It seems to be all of the 
same pattern, and may be made in a mill, for what we know. 
There Is, of course, evident in the thing the ability to write 
words ; but of any other exercise of the intellect there is no 
evidence. The writers may be real persons. There may 
possibly be such people alive as those who spin the stories 
for these papers, but no man, we think could testify to the 
fact. 

In these amazing '^ story-papers," with their wonderful 
stories, their impossible bears, panthers, Indians, sailors, 
and villains ; with their poetry, their fine writing, and their 
general effect, as if written, printed, and published in an 
idiot asylum, began, we believe, the practice of advertising 
on a large scale, and so obtaining a circulation. Their 
conductors have, and well they might, unlimited faith in 
printer's ink. Considering the stuff they actually get people 
to read, their faith is natural. They have reduced this 
advertising to a science. They paste the walls with their 
flame-colored pictures, in which panthers spring ten thou- 
sand feet from mountain cliffs on to the shoulders of innocent 
maidens, clad in white muslin, collecting lilies in the valleys 
of the Rocky Mountains ; or with striking pictures from 
real life, where a gentleman — with a two-edged sword in one 
hand and a brace of horse-pistols in the other, a knife in 
each boot, and six revolvers in his belt, together with a 
pocket-pistol in his hat-band — discusses some question of 
importance with another gentleman advanced in years, 
sitting in a modern drawing-room, on Fifth avenue, in an 
upholstered chair, and calls him " villain " in a hiss. That 
is one form of their advertising, and is a dreadful nuisance 
to people not blind. 

Another form is to get the proprietors of some paper to 
fill a page with the first chapter of one of their dreadful 
stories, and close by telling you that " for the rest of this 
highly romantic and thrilling story, the most wonderful pro- 
duction of the age, you must get the ' Saturday Blotter,' 



282 Copy. 

sold by all newsdealers at ten cents a number, — the greatest 
paper of the country, everybody writes for it," etc. 

These papers invented still another advertising "dodge." 
To them, we believe, we owe the premium list. 

In order to persuade or tempt people to take the trash 
they furnished, they offered a present. Each subscriber 
would receive a steel pen, or an elegant lead-pencil, worth 
twice the price of the subscription, and this wonderful 
paper, for which the great Corn-shucks writes only^ " be- 
sides." For two subscribers one would get still more, and 
for a dozen, if one could cheat them into paying for the 
trash, he would receive "a washing machine, a pocket-pistol, 
or 'Webster's Unabridged,' as he might order." We 
imagine this was found to be the most original and success- 
ful way to get off this stuff in large quantities. It was 
immediately adopted, and the plan imitated by all sorts of 
people, to get rid of all sorts of papers. It has come to 
this, that scarcely any newspaper is without a premium list. 
Religious papers and irreligious ones, daily and weekly, 
political and literary, magazines of all sorts, all periodical 
issues, indeed, have copied the fashion. " Look at our 
splendid list of premiums ! " are the first flaming words to 
strike one in almost all our newspapers. 

The " premiums " are of every variety. They, at least, 
will suit all tastes. " Planchette " is a favorite. Croquet 
games come next, perhaps, though the famous unabridged is 
very popular. Pencil-cases and churns, gold pens and pat- 
ent wringers, washing-machines and " magnificent copies of 
Tennyson," melodeons and reapers, velocipedes and card- 
baskets, strawberry plants and meerschaums, — we have seen 
them all among the premiums offered to induce one to take, 
or get his friends to take, some newspaper or magazine. 

And so they go. The secular press offering us straw- 
berry plants, and the religious ones sending us " Planchette," 
the Protestant ones rewarding our reading, or at least our 
subscribing, with a patent dish-washer or a big dictionary, 



Our Premium List. 283 

and the Romish ones cutting off forty days from our Purga- 
tory or saying masses for our great grandmother, who unhap- 
pily died before newspaper premiums were invented, and 
is therefore still in a bad way. To speak seriously, the 
whole thing is one of the meanest degradations of litera- 
ture. 

What should we think of a lawyer who advertised to 
make a present to any client who would employ him? 
AVhat of a physician who would promise each patient a pre- 
mium according to the length of his sickness and the perse- 
verance with which he swallowed his medicine ? Will it 
be long before preachers advertise for " calls," offering the 
biggest premiums for the loudest ? It is the gift enterprise 
swindle, introduced into what we suppose we must call liter- 
ature, and partakes of the dishonesty and knavery of the 
advertising scamps who inform the staring rustic that they 
will send him a gold watch for a dollar. 

A paper is worth its value, like all other wares. Let 
value be asked and paid. If it can give its subscribers 
presents for subscribing, it is getting the wherewithal out of 
them first in some shape. It is asking and receiving for 
itself more than it is worth. 

That is a very plain sum in arithmetic, and the present 
or premium business is a cheat on the face of it. But the 
fact is, the practice is evidence that those who carry it on 
are aware of the cheat. They do not consider their wares 
worth what they ask ; their literature is valueless. They 
recognize the fact that people must be bribed to read it, or 
at least to take it. They have no faith at all in it them- 
selves, and no disposition to trust it on its own merits. Con- 
sequently the whole system of premiums is an attempt to 
get off worthless trash by cheating simple souls with small 
bribes to buy it. 

It is a shame and degradation to literature, and deserves, 
and should receive, the unsparing denunciation of all men 
who have any regard for letters. The p^per that publishes 



284 Copy. 

•a premium list should be dropped at once and forever by 
every intelligent reader. It is trash and weakness, or it 
would not come with such a lie on its face. It is corrupting 
to moral and literary honesty, no matter what its pretensions 
to morality or piety. It is a disgrace to American intelli- 
gence, whether it offer to take one's soul out of Purgatory 
or give him a patent machine to make butter without milk. 

There are a number of really respectable papers which 
have gone into this literary quackery. But none have done 
it that have not suffered, and rightly. There is introduced 
an element of knavery, insincerity, and humbug, which 
colors all that such a paper may do or say thereafter. Its 
criticisms can have no weight, its opinions no seriousness, its 
praise or blame no value. There are bribes and premiums 
for everything, and we have reached the temper in which 
the mass of Americans read American newspapers with 
amusement at their solemn denunciations of wrong, and still 
greater at their solemn praises of virtue, and a curiosity to 
know just how much was paid for this puff, and what neglect 
to pay produced the onslaught, — the talk of the newspaper 
having come, in America, to be as weighty as the utterances 
of the learned fool or flatterer used to be in kings' courts. 

Intelligent people — all who have any regard for good 
letters, all who recognize the place literature ought to hold 
among the intellectual and spiritual forces of the country — 
should denounce, as it deserves, this wretched quackery and 
imposture of premium lists, and demand that it be left to the 
nameless papers that invented it, and share with them the 
contempt of all educated people. 

We want periodicals that will stand and prosper with- 
out bribes to their readers, in this country, or we would do 
well to dispense with them altogether. At least, we want 
such to be our religious periodicals. 



GOOD-HUMOR AND ILL. 

CAN anybody define good-humor ? We all know what 
it is. We can feel it and enjoy it, but it is hard to 
pin the thing down with any formal definition. The good- 
humored man is, at all events, a happy man ; a man to be 
envied, a man on whom troubles sit lightly, and a man who 
confers as much happiness as he enjoys. He radiates it, as 
it were, and his good-humor becomes an atmosphere in 
which other people's good-humor, latent or pined half to 
death, comes out, revives, and flourishes. 

Good-humor can scarcely be called a moral virtue. It 
depends perhaps as much on disposition and the perfect 
action of the liver as on anything else. A good-humored 
man must be, ipso facto^ a eupeptic man, a man that enjoys 
his dinner. Now, a quality which depends upon the action 
of a man's liver can scarcely be a high moral quality. And 
yet has any man a right to be dyspeptic 1 Is it not a moral 
duty not to be 1 Setting aside the rare cases of inevitable 
misfortune, is not dyspepsia a man's own fault generally, 
the result of his gluttony, his laziness, his stupidity, his care- 
lessness, or his ignorance .^ And are these things moral 
virtues } 

Has a man any right to make himself wretched, to peo- 
ple the world with horrors, to be a nuisance to himself and 
everybody about him, because he lacks the sense to control 
his appetite, or the energy to take sufficient exercise to keep 
his liver healthy 1 

One of these days we shall come to the conclusion that 
the snarling, fretful, ill-tempered or complaining and 



286 Copy. 

depressed victim is not merely to be pitied, but deserves to 
be punished as he is. He may be very devotional in his 
way. He may make high pretensions to piety and religious 
feeling, but he is none the less a nuisance, and, on the whole, 
dyspeptic piety is as unhealthy as any other dyspeptic 
thing. 

Commend us to the good-humored man, who feels, in 
some degree, satisfied with the world and his life in it, and 
who thinks men and women are generally good and pleasant 
creatures, whom it is good to know and meet ; who believes 
they mean well toward him, as he certainly does toward 
them ; who is ready to give and take in the struggle of life in 
a hearty, cheerful way, and who has an unspoken sort of 
conviction that it is no part of God's service to fret and 
whine, and no mark of deep piety to worry everybody into 
misery. 

There's little to jest about in these things, and one may 
be excused for taking the thing very soberly, and fighting 
out his small share of the battle in a very grim sort of style. 
It is all dead earnest — we know that well enough — and the 
issue is life or death. But the bravest soldier has always a 
certain cheerfulness, and fights the better because he has. 
One needs a little of the wine of life to strengthen his heart 
in the struggle. He is God's soldier toO; and the issue is 
certain, if he keep up good heart and hope, and fight away 
faithfully. The spring, of tears and laughter lie close 
together, and a healthy nature originates the one as 
promptly as the other. 

Take it altogether, there is a good deal to be thankful 
for in this life, and there is a fair amount of right good 
enjoyment, loyal and thankful enjoyment, to be got out of it 
if one keeps his eyes open and looks after it. 

It is the peculiarity of a good-natured man that he does 
this. He can be as grim as anybody when necessary, but 
he does not think it necessary to be grim all the time. He 
does not make bedfellows of his troubles, nor carry his 



Good-Humor and III. 287 

sorrows and disappointments in bundles under his arm 
round the streets. 

It is his misfortune to be taken, on this account, for a 
light person sometimes, for an unearnest man, a man who 
laughs and jests, and is "undignified." 

As a matter of fact, the most earnest men that ever have 
lived, the men whose terrible earnestness has shaken the 
world, have often been brimful of good-humor, of mirth, 
and merry-heartedness. Luther is an example, but only 
one. There are scores. A man works best when he works 
cheerily. When sailors have a particularly heavy anchor to 
weigh, or an unusually rebellious sail to haul home on a 
stormy night, the work always goes best with a song. 

We believe in the good-humored people. We believe in 
their work, in its wisdom and permanence. They, in the long 
run, will win. The despairing is half defeated already. 

" A merry heart is better than much corn and bean 
land," said a man whom the world misjudged as a jester all 
his life, but whose jests were all serious wisdom. Let a 
man thank God for the possession, for the good balance of 
soul and body that enables him to carry such a heart in his 
breast. 

Half the wrongs, miseries, and meannesses that curse 
this world are owing to the lack of this same " merry heart," 
to the jaundiced feeling that looks on the world with 
despair, and on mankind with distrust, and that offers a 
harbor in the heart for the evil spirits of envy, complaint, 
grumbling, and jealousy, and all the vile brood that go to 
make up that wicked thing, — ill-humor. 

When we come to ,see that good-humor is a Christian 
duty, that a man who is ill-humored, cross, snarling, jealous, 
suspicious, complaining, is simply an unchristian nuisance, 
we shall have begun to find the alphabet of Christian morals 
and manners ; an alphabet that a great many Christians 
appear yet to need to learn. 



THE GROWTH OF A LITURGY. 

A T 7E have sometimes heard it objected to a liturgy, by 
V V non-liturgical Christians, that the repetition of the 
same prayers and praises must gradually dull the mind to 
their meaning and power. There is, undoubtedly, to the un- 
devout, some danger here. It is a danger, however, by no 
means confined to the users of a liturgy. The Word of God 
itself, by continual repetition, loses its meaning to the care- 
less and irreverent. The soul is on probation in the use of 
all means of grace, and there is danger in all of spiritual 
deadness from familiarity. The danger should be recog- 
nized and guarded against in the use of a liturgy. Clergy 
and laity should both come to its solemn worship with minds 
and hearts attentive and prepared. 

But it is not repetition in itself that deadens the spiritual 
power of a liturgy, though we do acknolwedge the danger. 
A knowledge of human nature shows that repetition is the 
very power of a liturgy, the very secret of its hold on the 
heart. Th^re is the reason why a liturgy cannot be extem- 
porized, why an extemporized liturgy is the most barren of 
formalism. 

A liturgy is a growth. It is the accumulation of centu- 
ries. It is the prayers of the holiest in the past. It is the 
praises of the saintliest of all ages. It comes down, bur- 
dened with most sacred memories, sanctified with holiest and 
loftiest associations. These prayers have been the utter- 
ances of the greatest brains and the holiest hearts for cen- 
turies. These praises have been hallowed by the purest lips 
that ever spake. These petitions have gone up from dun- 



The Growth or a Liturgy. 289 

geon cells, where Christian heroes prepared to give life for 
faith. These hymns have rung in triumph round blazing 
pile and bloody block. Divinest sorrow has breathed these 
viisei'cres. Divinest joy has winged these jubilates up to 
God. They are, at last, the concentrated worship of the 
Christian ages. Every pain and every gladness, every 
mournful defeat, every glorious triumph, in all the cycles of 
the Church's story, are living yet in these words of power. 
They have been whispered when an infant died ; thcv have 
been wailed by the lips of a smitten nation asking mercy of 
a chastening God. They have echoed in the laborer's cot- 
tage, his thanksgiving for humble mercies to the lowly ; they 
have rung through the vaulted roofs of grand cathedrals, a 
people's shout of glory for deliverance to the great ^'' God of 
Battles." They are not one man's words, one heart's utter- 
ances. They are the w^orld's words. They are humanity's 
cries to heaven for ages. 

Thus has our liturgy grown. Thus does it come to us. 
Such a liturgy can never be made. Such a liturgy only 
grows. The oak of centuries stands by the hand of God. 
It has grown to what it is by His will. Men do not make 
either oaks or liturgies. They may prepare and plant the 
ground for both. 

The growth of a liturgy into the individual heart and 
life is by just the same process. Possibly the ^' Morning and 
Evening Prayer " speaks to no two souls alike, for the 
spiritual history of every devout heart is contained in those 
w^ords that are " common " to all. There is just why that 
is its excellence, which those who do not know the philoso- 
phy of man consider its fault, — its common and general 
character. It asks what all men want. It gives voice to 
humanity's common needs, and offers common thanks for 
common blessings. And each soul finds, under these com- 
mon formulas, the precise expression of its own special 
necessity or special thankfulness. 

The liturgy, we have said, expresses, possibly, for no 
13 



29Q Copy. 

two who will use it in any church next Sunday exactly 
the same. Each prays his personal prayer or offers his per- 
sonal thanks under the general form. And any devout 
soul, looking back to his spiritual experience, will find be- 
sides that the general formulas mean more to him to-day 
than they did last year ; that they meant more last year 
than they did the year before ; that, as he has passed through 
the chance and change of the earth, they have, for him, 
acquired special significance under this judgment or that 
mercy. 

It is the most beautiful thing about the liturgy, this grad- 
ual unfolding of its profound and personal sense in the 
phases of religious life ; this process by which, in a certain 
sense, I appropriate and make the general liturgy my own. 

The prayers are used day by day. They seem to have 
all the meaning they can have. I use them devoutly. One 
day a near friend sails away to a distant land. The words, 
familiar so long, fall from the pastor's lips, " That it may 
please Thee to preserve all that travel by land or by water," 
and I am startled by the new power of those words to me. 

Again and again I hear the familiar Litany. I seem 
thoroughly to possess its meaning. One day I learn that 
God has written down a dear sister a w^idow in His book; 
that she and her babes are desolate. The old familiar peti- 
tion, " That it may please Thee to defend and provide for 
the fatherless children and widows," falls on my ear in the 
familiar tones. Henceforth it is my own^ with a profounder 
meaning. From a heart touched by the finger of God, the 
response, " We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord," comes 
with a depth of feeling, with a sense unknown before. 

The priest stands at the altar. The sublime " Prayer for 
the Church Militant " falls from his lips in the people's 
name. I have heard it a thousand times, and I have entered 
into its power and spirit. I have been carried upward, on 
its strong wings of supplication, often. 

An honored father dies. I have stood by his open grave, 



The Growth of a Liturgy. 291 

and have heard the solemn words that committed that 
sacred dust to the earth till the morning of the Resurrec- 
tion. Again I hear the grand supplication at the altar side. 
Solemnly the well-known words fail upon the ear, — " And 
we also bless Thy Holy Name for all thy servants who 
have departed this life in Thy faith and fear." The old 
words are new. I feel their meaning now. The prayer, at 
last, under God's chastening hand, is mine. The pulses 
of another heart shall beat time, till death, to the solemn 
cadences of that majestic petition which joins Earth and 
Paradise, the crowned dead and the struggling living both 
in one. 

So grows a liturgy into the soul. There is the secret of 
its power among us. There is why, to Churchmen, extem- 
pore forms seem so dead and barren. The spiritual life of 
every devout Churchman has crystallized around those solemn 
sentences. They are not words only. To him they are 
things. 



TRUTH AND TRUTHS. 

TRUTH has more sides than one. Several statements 
may be made about any high truth without exhaust- 
ing its possibihties. 

There are pines upon the mountain. There are oaks 
upon it lower down. There are snows upon it higher up. 
There are green slopes upon its sides, and rocky gorges 
also. We may make any of these assertions about the 
mountain, and any one of them will be true. Yet no one of 
them will be all the truth. And, in this respect, any spirit- 
ual truth is like the mountain. It has more than one point 
of approach. It presents more than one face. It has more 
than one use, fulfils more ends than one, and its essence 
cannot be exhausted in the statement of one sentence. It 
is a fair conclusion — indeed, the only fair and sensible con- 
clusion — that a man, in teaching truth, must bear this in 
mind, and must be content to present, now this side of the 
truth, now that, according to the needs of the occasion and 
the capacities of those he teaches. He is a fool w^ho ex- 
pects to exhaust the possibilities of a great truth in one 
discourse or one essay. But there is more than this in this 
many-sidedness of truth. It will seem at times, to the 
thoughtless or to the untrained intellect, that the statements 
concerning truth, being various, contradict each other. 
When we say the mountain has snow upon it, we will seem 
to contradict our previous assertion that it has pines. There 
needs to be care and discretion here. It should be dis- 
tinctly understood that on one occasion we are presenting 
one part of the truth, and on another occasion another 



Truth and Truths. 293 

part; that neither part is ^// the truth; that neither contra- 
dicts the other ; and that all are necessary to a complete 
conception of the whole truth. 

It is even dangerous to undertake to decide which part 
of any truth is the most important. That view of it which 
to ourselves is the most attractive, beautiful, or fruitful, 
may not be so to another. That part of it most important 
to us may be of least importance to some one else. And as 
the needs of men vary, the needs of times vary. In one 
age, one view of a truth may be the one most necessary, — 
the view to be dwelt upon, explained, enforced, brought 
home to reason and to conscience. In another age, another 
view of it may be the view most fruitful, — the view which 
especially helps and blesses men. As men should make 
allowance for each other's needs in the conception and 
presentation of the same truth, so should the ages make 
allowance each for the other. 

The narrowness of human thought is shown nowhere as 
it is in this, — the lack of capacity to make allowance for 
the many sides of truth, the disposition to grasp one state- 
ment, and insist that such statement exhausts the subject, or 
even, which is still worse, to insist that every other state- 
ment on the subject must be false, — that when a man speaks 
about the fir zone round the mountain, he must necessarily 
deny the snow-caps and glaciers of the summit. 

Here we have the origin of sectarianism and heresy. 
The small bit of truth, grasped as it might be, and ought to 
be, lovingly, becomes, in the hands of the narrow-thoughted 
and narrow-hearted, intolerant of all the vast parts not seen 
or understood, sets itself up to be all, and vigorously de- 
nounces as false and misleading everything besides itself. 

The peculiarity of a Church catholic is that it holds the 
whole truth, and tolerates each man's capacities for the 
reception of any part of truth, even each age's capacity 
and each people's. It sees that God's truths are infinite; 
men cannot exhaust them. It requires all men in all ages 



294 Copy. 

to comprehend them. They are approached in all the 
lights of life and time, and show new features in all. Till 
time ends, and the great cliffs are bathed in the sunlit 
splendors of eternity, no created eye can take in all the 
lights and all the shadows that shift and play about the 
eternal hills of God. So the Church catholic is content to 
have men take what they can, to find their needs met and 
satisfied, day by day, in the shiftings of circumstances. 
Meanwhile, she insists that truth shall not erect itself 
against truth; that the part shall not call itself the whole ; 
that no tattered fragment from the great design shall flaunt 
itself as a battle-banner against the whole mystic web woven 
in the looms of heaven, and shot with dark and bright, 
with changeful color of flashing gold and mournful violet, 
whose whole eternal beauty and unity can be seen only in 
the land where there is no night. 

Thus we explain the vast toleration of opinion allowed 
in the primitive Church, the vast difference in the statement 
of truth we find there, and also the stern intolerance when 
any opinion refused to tolerate others, when any statement 
set itself up as exhaustive, and claimed to be the whole 
truth in condemnation of others. The primitive Church 
could be tolerant of strictness as stern as that of the 
Donatists, when such strictness dwelt in peace with the 
larger mercy beside it. It was only when Novatian and 
Donatist strictness claimed to be absolute truth, and de- 
nounced all else, that the Church was bound to condemn it 
as a schism and a treason against the Kingdom of Mercy. 

So she could tolerate the rebaptizing of heretics, also 
the acceptance and rectification of their baptism by con- 
firmation, as long as neither set itself up to exclude the 
other. And so, too, to go to higher things, the Alexan- 
drian magnifying of the teaching office of our Lord, which 
we find in Clement and Origen, was never supposed to con- 
tradict or injure the conception of the priestly and kingly 
offices which we find so dwelt upon in the later Augustine. 



Truth and Truths. 295 

The Church was intolerant only of intolerance. Inside the 
broad field of truth she allowed each to dwell where he 
would, to gather what fruits of heaven were best for his 
hungry heart, and to rejoice in the goodness and mercy of 
his God. It was only when he insisted that his little strip 
was the whole vast Eden, and that all fruits but his own 
were poison, that she met his narrowness and arrogance 
with rebuke. And it must be thus if we would rid ourselves 
of the evil spirit that is eating out the heart of religious 
power in the world to-day. We must rise to the compre- 
hension of the vastness of God's revealed truths, and to the 
toleration, in one fold, of different sights and varying com- 
prehensions. Men must cease to make statements, which 
are each true, contradict each other. 

It is true, for instance, on the New Testament's face, 
that Christ Jesus Avas and is a man. It is equally true, on 
the same pages, that He was and is God. AVhy make the 
one statement contradict the other ? Why erect a sect, not 
for the purpose of defending the first proposition, which all 
admit, but for the purpose of arraying it against the other 
proposition, and insisting that one shall not believe the 
last unless he deny the first .^ Strange, when one thinks 
that what calls itself ^' liberal Christianity " should have 
this meaning only, — that it insists on declaring half the truth 
about our Lord to be the whole. 

That our Lord is the pattern for humanity, the guide 
and example by whom men came to the Father, is absolute 
truth. That He is the Teacher, also, who reveals God's will 
to men, and brings down to earth the laws of heaven, is 
truth also. That He is the Victim who died for the sins of 
the whole w^orld is also truth eternal ; and that He is the one 
everlasting Priest who forever atones for sin, and presents 
the prayers of His redeemed at the throne of God ; that He 
is the Advocate avIio pleads for them before the Father, — all 
are alike absolute truths. But one of these truths may be 
dear to one man, it may have more of light, of meaning, and 



296 Copy. 

of fruitfulness to him than another. The Church is content. 
Only he is but one man. She insists he shall not deny the 
other truths. She holds them and teaches them because 
they are all essential, and to-morrow, in life's changing 
circumstances, even he may find one of these dearer to him 
than life. To-day he may look lovingly after the footsteps 
of his Pattern and Guide. To-morrow he may see only the 
Cross, and the Victim that hangs thereon. That awful sight 
may shut out from his eyes and thought the Teacher, the 
King, the Priest, the pleading Advocate. But the great 
Church fixes her larger sight on all, and sternly forbids him 
to narrow to his own vision the vast tracts of truth and 
knowledge she points out to all her millions. 

In our own Church, at this day, the old weakness and 
narrowness of humanity, in the comprehension of God's 
truth, are working their old results. Baptism, for instance, 
is admission into the outward Church. That is a truth 
unassailable. It is something done by a man, or done by 
men for him. But does that exhaust the truth ? Is that all ? 
It is also something done by God; man is not the only 
actor. There is an inward as well as an outward, and both 
ar3 real. This also is a truth unassailable. Now, why 
should either statement be held to be destructive of the 
other ? Why should either claim to be all the truth ? Still 
more, why should those v/ho hold the first, who are at lib- 
erty to hold it, teach it, press it, make it fruitful (and it may 
be made greatly so), why should they insist that others, 
believing that, shall not be allowed to believe and teach 
the other also, and find that fruitful ? 

Take the other Sacrament. He who said, " This is my 
body," "This is my blood," said also, ''Do this in remem- 
brance of me." The Eucharist is a mem.orial. That is one 
certain truth. But it is, we hold, more. That statement 
does not exhaust the nature of the Eucharist It is also 
''the communication of the body and blood of the Lord." 
And yet these two statements about it, both plain on the 



Truth and Truths. 297 

face of the New Testament, have been ranged as destructive 
of each other for three hundred years. Especially have 
those who hold the first insisted that no man shall hold the 
last. They make a bare, bald memorial of it, and insist it 
shall be nothing else. Now, since others are just as free as 
they to hold it to be a memorial, as there is no debate 
about that at all ; since the truth so dear to them is a truth 
so dear to others, is there any reason why they should insist 
that people shall hold no other truths, that their spiritual 
sight shall be the measure for all humanity and the whole 
Church of God ? 

We can easily conceive that men may, in the matter of 
Sacraments, grasp and hold mainly the outward. So rich 
are they, that even in the shells, souls may find meat to 
strengthen and sustain them. The man who comes to the 
Holy Communion only lovingly to commemorate his Lord's 
death, only to gather up and fuse into one strong act of 
devotion his love for and faith in that dear Victim and 
Deliverer, has surely not received in vain ; has surely not 
gone away without a blessing farther reaching than he knows. 

Why shall he insist that his conception shall be all men's, 
and his single apprehension the supreme truth ? W1iy, above 
all, shall he insist on making the Church of God see with his 
eyes and teach out of his soul ? 

It is a lesson for us to learn at this time, that truth is 
manifold ; that its many sides are seen by no one pair of 
eyes ; that there are luminous points of vision which the 
strongest sight can but glance at and turn from. But also 
it is never to be forgotton that the weak shall not make his 
vision the measure for the strong; that he shall not be 
allowed to say that all he does not and cannot see is the 
red lio;ht from below, and that his brethren must bandao;e 
their eyes to his measure, or perish in their sins. 

The Church of God is large enough to hold all men. All 
possible statements of the truth are hers, and it is hers to see 
that no one statement insist on destroying the others. 

13* 



I EVIL FOR GOOD. 

EVERY falsehood is but the corruption of some truth. 
The greater the falsehood, indeed, the greater the 
truth. The bigger the lie, the more truth it needs to keep 
it living. 

It is an argument for positive teaching that we find here. 
Denial of a falsehood may also be a denial of the truth which 
is in the falsehood. 

But we let that thought pass. The other one is upper- 
most, — that it is the best things which, changed in their proper 
nature, become the worst. The holiest truth, distorted, be- 
comes the most deceitful devil's lie. The greatest and the 
grandest truths, with this metamorphosis of the pit upon 
them, are the lies that lead souls to ruin. The catholic 
truth of the perfect humanity of our Lord, which has flashed 
in glory and flamed in hope through the Church of God 
since the beginning, becomes caricatured into the Socinian 
denial of Christ's divinity, which takes away man's Lord, 
and leaves the world darkened of its deliverer. 

It has been so with every falsehood from the first. 
Some holy and priceless truth has been twisted out of its 
proper place, turned loose and wild, and armed against its 
fellow truths, and has faced astonished men as a hideous lie 
henceforward. 

It is not in the matter of doctrinal truth only that 
men are ruined and the world driven wild by heavenly 
things, turned evil by truths converted into lies, by angels 
turned to demons. The experience runs through our 
earthly life. The fall of the lost angels is typical of a per- 
petual truth. 



Evil for Good. 299 

Our vices live next door to our virtues. Beside all 
human good, all finite good, stands evil, the caricature of 
that good, and wearing its very lineaments, distorted indeed, 
but in the shadows of this world the distinctions are half 
the time invisible. The demon in the dusk of life passes 
for an angel, the shadow of whose face he borrows. 

Men perish by the best that is in them. That is the pity 
of it. The best, fallen, becomes the worst. The highest 
archangel has fallen the lowest, for he had the farthest to 
fall. Men are seduced by evil always in the guise of good. 
No soul chooses the evil for itself. Whatever man follows 
he follows as good. And the temptation always comes to 
him on some good side. 

The hatred, scorn, and wrath against wrong and wrong- 
doing, which is one of the divine lineaments stamped on 
humanity, becomes revenge, malice, and hate. Generosity, 
large-heartedness, warm social feeling, become prodigality, 
gluttony, drunkenness, and riotous living. Frugality and 
economy become meanness and miserliness. The whole de- 
sire to go upward, and not downward, to walk the white 
heights of life among the best, turns into a wretched ambi- 
tion which sneaks tow^ard its end by the dirtiest paths. 
There is not a noble gift that adorns humanity that has not 
its hideous " double," hideously like it, hideously unlike it, 
and in the blindness that falls on an abused conscience, a 
man loses the power to distinguish, and follows the "double." 
So imperceptibly does the change take place, so gradually 
does the virtue change into the vice, the good thing into the 
misleading and evil thing, that a man goes far, often, before 
his eyes are opened, if they are ever opened at all. 

It is the most awful mystery of human nature this, that 
it touches hell and heaven all its days, that they both lie so 
near it, and that one seems to change so often into the 
other. To say that men are lost by their virtue is not a 
paradox, though it sounds so, for the virtue changes into 
vice, and the man follows it still. In how many a man is 



300 Copy. 

even the love of wife and children and home, one of the 
most beautiful things in his nature, changed into an exagger- 
ated selfishness, of which he is the slave in utter ignorance, 
while he gives his selfishness a sacred name ? 

The Word of God gives a high place to love, speaks high 
words of it, makes it the ruler of the world, the one thing 
that lasts forever, the fulfilling of the law, a heavenly guest 
on earth. It has its hell-born caricature too, wearing its 
holy name, using its holy phrases, clothing itself in its holy 
garments, and men break through every tie, and outrage 
every human relation, and damn their own souls and the 
souls of others, and work ruin for which their lives can 
never atone, in the name of that Avhich " worketh no ill to 
his neighbor," and ''is the fulfilling of the law." 

So always hell is served with the liturgies of heaven. The 
devil demands the best men have to give. He will not be 
content with half the nature, and that the lowest. He must 
have all, only he must have it inverted. 

" Woe to them that put evil for good and good for evil, 
that put darkness for light and light for darkness." It is an 
easy thing to do, and the woe falls commonly. It is done 
in all sin and by every sinner. A man purchases ruin at the 
price of stultifying his conscience. He mistakes Satan at 
last for the Lord, as he mistakes a drunken debauch for 
brotherly feeling, and lust for love. 

Beneath this solemn responsibility, as beneath all the 
solemn responsibilities of life, a man walks his life long. 
The evil will assail him on the best side of his nature, his 
temptations will come where he is apparently the highest. 
He will guard the weak points. What he thinks the strong 
points will be left unguarded, and there is where he will find 
the danger. 

Satan comes never in his own guise. He would frighten 
the most careless, coming as himself. He puts on the garb 
of an agel of light, and speaks to a man on the side that 
seems to look heavenw^ard. He quoted Scripture to our 



Evil for Good. ^Ol 

Lord in the desert. He always tempts in the language of 
heaven. 

What is the conclusion ? That bare, bold, professed, and 
ugly evil will seldom be the evil which will assail a man ; 
that what he considers the outspoken and confessed bad in 
his nature is not that which he will most need to watch ; 
that he wants a clear spiritual sight, and a conscience like 
a touchstone to detect the evil under its disguise of good, 
and that he needs to guard especially against w4iat he con- 
siders his virtues, lest, in the accursed alchemy of hell, they 
have been transmuted, while he slept, into vices. 

Many a sinner deludes himself with the notion that he 
may find heaven on his road to hell. Many a lost soul has 
found hell on what it dreamed was the road to heaven. 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 

WITH a certain class of people in this country there 
seems to be nothing so pleasant as the prospect of 
trouble with England. They are small people, it is true, 
and densely ignorant people as a rule, but as politicians and 
newspaper men they are, for their size, remarkably noisy 
people. The prospect of any trouble in England delights 
them. The appearance of any humihation for England 
enchants them ; and if their words convey their meaning, a 
war between this country and England, for any cause, or 
none at all, would confer upon them supreme felicity. 

Much of all this is mere bluster, indulged because it is 
felt to be mere bluster, and because there is not the slightest 
prospect of its becoming anything else. It is indulged, 
where the waiter or speaker has any sense or intelligence, 
for the Irish, or some equally discriminating vote. 

There is sometimes, on the other side, the same sort of 
exhibition of ignorance, prejudice, and empty brag against 
this country. It finds its way into speech and print, where 
it grieves all sober people, and, as far as it goes, is fit to com- 
pare with its echo on this side. 

How much this silly clatter on both sides of the water 
complicates the settlement of any diplomatic difficulty 
between the countries is easily seen from late experience. 
The noise is so loud that each country takes it to express 
the sober conviction of the ether. A ''buncombe " speech 
in Congress ; a truculent article in the " Broad Axe of Lib- 
erty," are taken as expressing the sentiments of the American 
people. Some equally insane performance on the other side. 



England and America. 3^3 

in the way of speech or writing, is supposed to express the 
deliberate conviction of "the governing classes," as we call 
them, of England about America. 

Toward no country except England do American 
waiters and speakers, of a certain calibre, express them- 
selves so recklessly, impudently, and truculently, and 
toward no people except the American do English writers 
and speakers of the same grade of sense indulge in habitual 
depreciation, sneers, and falsehood. And yet between Eng- 
land and ourselves relations are closer than between any 
two countries on the globe. To no country is our friendship 
so important as it is to England. To no country is that of 
England so important as to ours. A thousand ties of inter- 
est and sympathy exist between the two nations. In many 
respects w^e are almost the same people. A war w4th Eng- 
land would do us quite as much harm as it would England. 
To neither country could it do any possible good, turn out 
as it might. 

All this is well understood by all except the most ignor- 
ant ; and yet it seems, at times, as if the intention on both 
sides was to stir up the utmost possible ill-will between two 
countries whose' highest interests depend upon being at 
peace each with the other. 

How little the bluster and bray of little politicians and 
political waiters on this side amount to as expressing Amer- 
ican sentiment we here understand. They do not under- 
stand it in England. How little the same sort of thing 
amounts to in England is understood there, but not under- 
stood here. Each people takes the folly of the other for 
sober sense, and allows itself to be lashed periodically into 
excited wrath by what the other counts as absolute folly. 

The English mistake arises from the fact that this is 
a republic ; the people are the rulers. Every utterance 
throughout the country is taken to be the serious utterance 
of the rulers. The Englishman considers that in this coun- 
try every declaration that can get itself made public is a 



304 Copy. 

sort of official declaration, because it is presumed to reflect 
the convictions of the people ; and the people in this land 
are the sovereigns. 

We make a like mistake. England is a monarchy. Eng- 
land has an aristocracy, and to the ordinary American mind 
a monarchy and an aristocracy are powers that rule a coun- 
try so completely that no sentiment can be entertained, 
or at least expressed, without their sanction. Whatever 
opinion about America can get itself made public in Eng- 
land is supposed to be the opinion of " the governing classes" 
at least ; otherwise why do they allow it to be put forth ? 
Thus each country, in the strangest way, misunderstands 
the other, and from that misunderstanding each contrives to 
keep the other in a chronic state of irritation. 

It might help matters on both sides to remember that 
both countries are free, and are, in fact, the only free coun- 
tries existing ; that they are, after all, essentially alike in 
constitution and law. One of the inconveniences of a free 
country is that it must have free speech and free printing ; 
that it must allow anything not criminal to be spoken 
and published. This being so, an intolerable deal of folly, 
stupidity, insanity, and nonsense must be uttered in such a 
country. It is every man's right to utter his wisdom, but also 
to utter his folly ; and on this last right your free denizen 
of a free country plants himself firmly, and says his say. 

England and the United States see fit each to allow this 
right. Indeed, in both countries it is considered quite a 
sacred right. It follows that all sorts of talk about England 
is tolerated here, as all sorts of talk about the United States 
is tolerated in England. But the American people w^ould 
be very sorry to hold itself responsible for all that appears 
in the "Broad Axe of Liberty," or is bellowed in the 
speeches of the Hon. Elijah Pogram, in Congress. And 
England w^ould be equally loth to claim responsibility for 
the "powerful leaders" of the penny paper, or the speeches 
of some of its bio;-headed M. P.'s. 



England and America. 3^5 

The Emperor of Russia forbade the publication, in his 
dominions, of caricatures of the great surrenderer of Sedan. 
But we fear Queen Victoria would hardly dare to suppress 
the '^ Times " for a sharp onslaught on our President, or the 
President to attempt the same operation on the " Herald " 
for a slashing attack at Mr. Gladstone. If one has a free 
press, one must pay the price for the blessing. The free 
press of England must enjoy the happiness of thorning 
Americans, and the free press of the United States must be 
left in undisturbed possession of its privilege of abusing 
England. 

Both countries have not only the same blessing of free 
speech and a free press, — they have also a common lan- 
guage. The compliments of each to the other do not need 
translating. The intercourse between the two countries, 
also, is as regular and frequent as though they were parts of 
the same. Whatever is said in the one is instantly repeated 
in the other, and is readable by every man who cares to 
read. If we spoke different tongues, half the bitter things 
said or written here would never reach England, and Eng- 
lish writers and speakers might sneer to their hearts' content 
at America, and we would sleep undisturbed. But as it is, 
we are two nations speaking the same tongue, and yet totally 
distinct; enough alike to feel every point of difference as a 
wrong, and enough unlike to make us know we are strangers ; 
close enough to know whatever each says about the other, 
and having that respect for each other which makes hostile 
criticism from us bitter to England. 

We touch each other at so many points that the chances 
of jar and irritation are immensely multiplied. Were vv^e 
utterly strange people, we would treat each other as strang- 
ers, expecting nothing else, and be satisfied. But it is the 
fact that English opinion about America is the one opinion 
for which we naturally care, as American opinion about 
England is the opinion about which England is most 
concerned. 



306 Copy. 

There is no remedy for a chronic condition of irritation 
except in the increasing good sense of both countries. Let 
Americans learn to value the hasty utterances of a free press 
or platform in England as they value the same utterances at 
home, and let Englishmen understand that bluster and brag 
in America amount to just the same as bluster and brag in 
England. In neither country are these things to be taken 
seriously. In neither do they represent the sentiment of 
the country. They are incident to the freedom which rules 
in both lands; froth on the surface of the great calm deep 
beneath. 

Two great nations, bound almost as closely as if they 
were one ; bound by all bonds, for their own sake and the 
world's sake to respect each other, and keep the peace each 
with the other, will find, in time, that this is the best done 
by laughing at a great deal which causes ill-feeling now. 
There has not been in more than half a century, and 
there is not likely to be for many more half centuries, 
any serious danger of a rupture in the friendly relation of 
the two countries. If there were any chance whatever that 
irritating babble on either side could make such rupture, 
that babble would be the most wicked thing on earth. As 
there is no such chance, it is simple nonsense to be laughed 
at, if one is in the mood ; to be taken any way but seriously. 

Perhaps it is the conviction, on both sides, of the fact 
that the relations between the two countries can never be 
other than friendly and peaceful that makes possible between 
America and England a kind of talk which would be ven- 
tured on in neither country if it were supposed, for a moment, 
to mean anything serious. Everybody here knows that such 
is the case on this side the water, and we will not be far 
wrong in inferring that it is the same on the other. 



FIGHTING AND PRAYING. 

IT is a curious fact that, from the opening of the late 
Franco-Prussian war, neither under the imperial gov- 
ernment nor the so-called republic, was there any reference 
whatever publicly made to the Almighty as having anything 
to do with the issue on the part of France. 

The Germans continually referred all their successes to 
the God of Battles. Kaiser William has been even accused 
by shallow-pated fools of "cant," because he habitually, in 
all his dispatches, gave God thanks for every marvellous suc- 
cess, — he, the grinnnest and most downright simple-hearted 
and hard-headed of men, who has little to say ever, and 
says that little under pressure, has been accused of " cant," 
because he gave God the glory. 

When we were in the depths of our national agony, we 
set apart days of fasting and prayer in every dark time, and 
days of thanksgiving when we were cheered by victory. 
We deprecated the wrath of heaven in our distress ; we 
gave God thanks when He raised us out of the depths. We 
referred our cause to Him all through, and took the blows in 
chastisement, and the victories with thankfulness. We could 
not well do otherwise. The government, in proclaiming 
such days, was only giving expression to a universal national 
sentiment. There was no cant about it. It was all felt to 
be downrightly real. In the throes of what might be na- 
tional dissolution, the people, on both sides, cried aloud to 
heaven, and put their cause in the hands of God, — North 
and South alike. Perhaps that has had more to do with 



3o8 Copy. 

the quiet acceptance of the fact than shallow-brained talkers 
have discovered. 

In France there has not, as far as we know, been one 
official word to indicate that the King of the Earth has 
anything to do with the issue. In her deep humiliation 
there has been no day of prayer. She has been atheistic 
all through. She has taken her defeats in impotent wrath 
or in sullen despair. She has vapored, bragged, scolded, 
gnashed her teeth in wrath ; she has done everything but 
humble herself under the hand of heaven. As far as any 
official utterance goes, no man w^ould learn that France be- 
lieves there is any God that has anything to do with the rise 
or fall of nations, or the government of this earth. 

No doubt there are thousands of religious souls in 
France who have turned to the Lord in their distress, but 
the strange fact remains, that a nominal Christian nation has 
not, as a nation, in the midst of defeats which seem to have 
been beyond the power of man to inflict, appointed one 
hour of prayer, or called upon the people to appeal against 
man to the Lord of Hosts. 

It does not appear that the Church even has done so. 
Paris, beleaguered by enemies, strangling daily in the coils 
drawn round her throat, has blustered, lied, and suffered, 
but neither her government nor her archbishop has cried, 
" Repent ye, and turn to the Lord." 

That such should have been the case in England, Amer- 
ica, or Prussia, is out of the question. Were London be- 
leaguered as has Paris been, its vast population would have 
thronged its churches on appointed days, and men who 
never prayed would have prayed then to the God of all 
mercy ; would have put their cause into the hands of the 
Almighty, and in His name, and with prayers upon their lips, 
w^ould have rushed out to meet their enemies. 

Never, we think, in the history of the world, has there 
been such an atheistic exhibition as France has given in 
these last months. And to day beaten, humiliated, ground 



Fighting and Praying. 3^9 

into the dust, she turns no hand or eye to God. Heathen 
nations, in their distress, suppHcated their gods. Led by the 
bhnd instincts of natural reUgion, they recognized the hand 
that smote them, and from smoking altars cried for pity to 
the unseen powers whom they dimly felt, but did not know. 
'But in the end of the nineteenth century a Christian na- 
tion looks for help everywhere but to the Lord of Sabaoth. 

Is Romanism responsible ? Is it ignorance of that Word 
of God which draws the veil and reveals the Ruler Avho 
guides all ; ignorance of those grand old Scriptures which 
proclaim the fact that nations are but the instruments of 
God — the rods in His hand — that " He putteth down one 
and setteth up another; " is it this which makes Gambetta, 
Favre, and Hugo bluster insane rhetoric about ''liberty, 
equality, and fraternity," while William, Moltke, and Bis- 
marck fight and pray ? Is it this which makes French armies., 
composed of as brave men as live, melt away before the 
men that sing Luther's hymns and carry New Testaments 
in their spiked helmets.^ 

Shall we say that Germany has conquered because she 
prays, and France has fallen because she h in that state 
that no government of hers thinks of referring things 
to heaven .'^ We would not be far wrong, on the lowest 
grounds, to assert the affirmative. No man fights so ter- 
ribly as the man that goes to battle from his knees. No 
troops march, endure, and wrestle, like troops that march 
to war singing hymns to the Lord of Hosts. That Kaiser 
William believes that his sword is the sword of God may be 
a right or wrong belief, but no man will question the efi'ect 
of the belief on him and his soldiers. Praying never inter- 
fered with fi2:htin2: since the world besran ; and the most ter- 
rible enemies a foe can meet are those who charge rifles and 
fix bayonets with a prayer to Flim who sustains the right 
and puts down the wrong in Flis ovrn good time. 

Nearly three hundred years ago there was a terrible Sun- 
day in Calais Roads. The harbor was like the mouth of 



3IO Copy. 

hell, that lovely July day. The Spanish fleet, "invincible," 
was there, and around it were gathered the English ships 
that had followed its broad wake, like bulldogs, up the Chan- 
nel. Howard, Drake, Raleigh, — the gentlemen of England, 
in their own ships, or the Queen's, were shouting through 
the battling smoke and the glare of burning hulks the Eng- 
lish words of command. It was tens against hundreds. It 
was coasting ships against the towering ships of Spain. 
It was David and Goliath once more. And across the 
waters, in peaceful England, the bells rang to prayer, and 
from every parish church and cathedral aisle, over all the 
land, rose a nation's cry to the God of Battles, that He 
would save His kneeling suppliants from Alva's soldiers and 
the Inquisition ; would deliver England from blood and Are 
and the trampling feet of wrathful enemies. If we take the 
atheistic ground that God neither heard nor cared, shall v/e. 
dare to deny that the knowledge that all England — wives, 
children, brothers, sisters. Queen, nobles, jDriests, peasants 
— w^as on its knees that day did not fire, with even more than 
their ancestral .daring, the men who drove the shattered, 
burning hulks of the armada out into the stormy Northern 
seas ? 

Let a people have the Bible in its hands, let it hear and 
read those grand old Hebrew Scriptures which claim this 
earth and all its kingdoms for God, let it believe in Him, 
" the King of kings and Lord of lords," by whom '' kings 
reign and princes execute justice," and however it may 
forget Him in the day of its prosperity, that people will turn 
to Him in the day of its trial, and from battered walls and 
new-made graves will appeal its cause to the eternal justice, 
and will rise from its knees to victory. 

The atheist may scoff at the supposition that God inter- 
feres, but he will not scoff when meeting such a people in 
battle. They have never been subjects of much amusement 
to their foes, these people who fast and pray before battle, 
and thank God after victory. When the Germans lay along 



Fighting and Praying 3^^ 

the Saar, holding prayer meetings and singing German 
hymns in their nightly camps, and Berlin closed her theatres 
and wept and prayed in her churches, and Frenchmen sang 
and made themselves merrv on the other side, and Paris 
thronged the opera and the Jar din. Mobile^ it was not hard 
to forecast the end. 

Is Romanism responsible ? The French fact, we answer, 
is only equalled by the Roman fact, that in the hour of his 
fall, so good a man in his way as Pius should not have 
asked his followers over the world to keep one day of suppli- 
cation and prayer and fasting in his behalf. Fie, too, scolds 
and blusters and prophecies — the Dumas rhetoric turned 
into Italian or bad Latin ; does everything but recognize 
the hand of God in his humiliation, and bow down humbly 
beneath the chastisement. 

It is not the bare fact that France and Rome do not ap- 
point days of humiliation and prayer. That fact is but evi- 
dence of the other fact, — that a sense of responsibility to 
God, as a government and a people, a sense of His presence 
and sovereignty, has passed out of the national life. When 
that sense is gone, no matter what the apparent power and 
permanence of the government and the people, they 'are 
doomed ; they have forgotten God, and the whole life is hol- 
low, and the secret of strength has departed. 

The world has told the story with all her voices for three 
thousand years. Any time, for twenty years past, it would 
have required no prophet to have foretold the fate of Paris. 



NEED OF THE JUDGMENT. 

THE world goes to vast trouble and expense to get jus- 
tice done. In all civilized countries the machinery 
of justice is an important, perhaps the most important, part 
of the government. There are legislative bodies to make 
laws, courts to try causes under the laws, officers to execute 
their decisions, and a large and learned body of men 
employed as the business of their lives to conduct causes 
before these courts. 

In the rudest form of social life the business of getting 
judgment and justice done is a matter that men have never 
neglected. But in highly-civilized and vast communities it 
rises to overshadowing proportions, and consumes a large 
share of the study, the labor, and the time of men. 

A.nd these are rendered willingly, for deep in the heart 
of man lies the desire to see wrong punished and right 
rewarded. He considers time and pain and wealth not 
wasted in the work of getting the right thing established 
between man and man. Notwithstanding all its wrong- 
doings, there is the abiding love of justice in humanity 
which prompts men to be at any pains to get it. The most 
lawless communities strive for it in wild ways, the most law- 
less man respects it. 

An evidence this, as so many other things are, of the exist- 
ence yet, in man, of the broken image of his Maker. In a 
perfect world we would expect perfect justice. We will try 
to make this world as perfect as possible by getting as much 
justice as possible. In a world where every wrong is pun- 
ished, and every right rewarded, we vv'ould look on the 



Need of the Judgment. 3^3 

morrow for the millennium. It would be our conception of 
a perfect social order, for we have the strong conviction that 
out of such an order evil would vanish suddenly, and the 
whole business of punishment end. 

So we labor with our contrivances of one sort or other, 
in imperfect, blind ways, it is true, but patiently and faith- 
fully, to bring a little of Heaven's justice down to earth, 
and make righteousness in our feeble way prosperous and 
triumphant. 

We do not succee'd. It needs no superhuman eyesight 
to see that. We have faith, some of us, that wrong is unsafe, 
accursed, and sure to be punished ; that right alone will 
triumph and w^ill stand ; that, in the long run, it does not 
pay to work for the devil, and that it does pay richly to work 
for God. We repeat * the faith to ourselves and others to 
strengthen it, we mark the instances that confirm it, we 
teach it to our children, we put it into our tales to make 
them consistent, and yet, after all, we know it remains a 
faith. It never becomes a knowledge. 

There are a thousand instances against it. The vast 
mass of the wrongs of this world are never, as far as this 
world is concerned, righted at all. Thousands of them the 
world could not right if it devoted all its wisdom and power 
to that sole business. Wrongs are prosperous and unchecked 
in a whole nation for years. Millions of men are guilty in 
the mass of gigantic wrongs which triumph while generations 
are born and die, the wrongers and the wronged together. 
Among men, as individuals, the same thing occurs. The evil- 
doer lives and dies, and there has been no sign of punish- 
ment for his evil-doing. He lived and died in prosperity, 
and lies under marble. The righteous man, the true, honest 
soul, that suffered his wrongs, that bore the torture and the 
bitterness, lived and died wretchedly, and lies forgotten. 

No mxan come to years accepts the prosperous man as 
necessarily a good man, nor the suffering man as necessarily 
a bad man. We cease to expect that men, in the corrupted 
14 



3^4- Copy. 

currents of this world, shall get their deservings. We mark 
the rare cases where punishment comes swift and seen on 
evil-doing, not as establishing a rule, but as confirming a 
faith that needs strengthening. We confess that the world 
does not do justice. Its rewards and its penalties are alike 
unfair. It crowns the scoundrel and slays the prophet as 
of old. 

We protest against this. We refuse to accept it as the 
thing that ought to be. Our instincts rise in revolt against 
it, and we patiently struggle on, year in and year out, trying 
new methods, or a more careful administration of old ; doing 
anything rather than the last and w^orst and most faithless 
thing, — sitting down content. For all this, the triumph of 
evil-doing, the success of fraud and force, the prosperity 
of lies, we hold to be against God's will. To hold them 
otherwise is to dethrone the Almighty. What would a man 
wish to do with himself if he could believe for an instant 
that successful villany is a thing which God can let stand ? 
In working to make villany unsuccessful, more, to punish it, 
trample on it, and crush it out, — so only do we hold ourselves 
to be w^orking according to God's wdll. 

The everlasting and unalterable justice of God is the 
sheet-anchor of faith and hope in the injustices- and wrongs 
of time. The enlightened conscience refuses to accept the 
temporary shows of things as agreeable to that justice. They 
are manifestly unjust, often. And yet the high God rules 
over all. What is the end ? There must be a rehearing. 
The Scriptures declare it, and reason seconds Scripture, and 
demands it ; and man's dim sense of justice grows with the 
righteousness of Heaven, and declares that even its sense of 
right would be outraged if things are to stand as they are. 

God's justice is a perfect justice. It is as impossible 
that it should pass over the wrong of a man as the wrong of 
a world. It would as effectually deny that justice to suppose 
that God can let a beggar lie under injustice or suffer 
unrighted injury, as to suppose that it can be deaf to the 



Need or tbk. Judgment. 3^5 

wrongs of a universe. But as a matter of fact, as far as this 
world goes, wrongs do go unrighted, and evil-doing unpun- 
ished, before our eyes all the while. The grave closes on 
things earthly, and justice was not rendered to the evil man, 
or to the victim of his wrong. If this were all, if there is to 
be no calling up of unsettled questions again, we must sub- 
mit to believe the universe governed by an unjust God. 
And because we cannot do that, we are driven by our reason 
to accept what the Lord reveals, — a future rehearing. 

The general judgment is, among other things, God's jus- 
tification of Himself before His creatures. It is a necessity 
in His nature, and it is a necessity to men and angels. It 
cannot help being. It is not an arbitrary arrangement on 
His part, which He makes capriciously. It is the result of 
a Divine necessity. He cannot leave a single wrong unan- 
swered for. He cannot have a solitary injustice unrighted. 
Therefore, 'Sve must all stand before the judgment-seat of 
Christ." Therefore, oppressor and victim, slanderer and 
slandered, cheat and cheated, seducer and seduced, tempter 
and tempted, wronger and wronged, between whom in this 
world there was no decision risked, or else a decision that 
was lame or false, must face each other some time, and have 
the case heard and decided, and even-handed justice meted_ 
in the case. No soul can be spared. Can even the child- 
souls, that died before a fallen nature showed its fall in act, 
can even they be spared, when we know that the sins of the 
fathers are visited on the children, and the mother by her 
sin hands down to the daughter her own evil taint ? Ah, 
we are so bound and tied with interwoven cords, each to 
each, that we are victims and wrong-doers in turn, and in 
any hour when the long roll of wrongs the world has seen 
are to be righted, we shall find ourselves in turn accuser and 
accused. 

The Day of Judgment, whatever of unfathomed meaning 
those awful words contain, is a necessity to the moral nature 
of man. We cannot understand life, or the world without. 



o 



1 6 Copy. 



There is nothing more senseless than both if there be 
nothing coming after them. They are too far wrong, too 
hopelessly and totally inconclusive and unfair, to allow us to 
believe that eternal justice can let them pass unquestioned. 
The assurance that they shall not, that some day, in the 
great days of eternity, the whole long story shall be gone 
over again, in the open court of the universe, and all false 
judgments be reversed, and all wrongs righted, is the only 
thing that makes time and the world tolerable. 

And in that assurance — the passionate, blind assurance 
of their own hearts, even unconfirmed by any word from 
Heaven — men have knelt in all ages and in all lands, appeal- 
ing to the great God against the bitter wrongs of men, 
appealing from all earthly tribunals wherever men give 
judgment to that awful Supreme Court of final hearing, 
whose vision in flame and whiteness has blazed through all 
the darkness of all the sorrow-burdened years, the terror of 
the evil-doer, the hope of the suffering and the wronged. 



SOME PREHISTORIC VILLAGES. 

WE have all heard about "prehistoric man." He lived, 
they tell us, long before Adam. The history of 
man in the Old Testament has, therefore, nothing to do 
with him. He began life as a savage, Mr. Huxley says, as a 
tailless monkey, having struggled up to that point from the 
original "protoplasm." He then gradually emerged from 
his monkey condition, finding out the use of stone, then 
bronze, and gradually iron, and so comes down to historic 
times. There is a picture of a " prehistoric " family done to 
the life {? taken from life) in a highly scientific work pub- 
lished by the Harpers. In this picture a couple of " prehis- 
toric " gentlemen, in primitive " prehistoric '* costume, are 
pitching into a "prehistoric" bear with a pair of stone ham- 
mers. A *' prehistoric " elephant, and a number of other 
animals, look sedately on the fight. In a cave in the back- 
ground are a number of " prehistoric " ladies and infants. 
Altogether, it is a wonderful picture of the period. 

The " scientific " folk have divided these prehistoric 
times into several ages. The principal ones are the Stone, 
the Bronze, and the Iron Ages. Before the Stone there was, 
by analogy, a Wooden Age, when they used clubs ; and after 
the Iron, come the historic people. 

The theory, or, as they will call it, the " science, " is that 
these were very long ages indeed ; that for centuries — many 
centuries — men used stone hatchets and flint knives, and 
then, for many other centuries, they used bronze weapons, 
having first invented them of course, and then, for other 
long centuries, they used iron. 



3 1 8 Copy. 

To be sure, iron is a simple metal, easily found, easily 
reduced, and easily wrought ; while bronze is a compound 
metal, demanding, for its production, some knowledge of 
metallic combinations, and finding its two constituents far 
apart ; and moreover, bronze is found in countries where 
neither of the metals that compose it are found, and there- 
fore we might infer that it was imported, and that, therefore, 
in the " Bronze Age,*' there was not only skill in compound- 
ing m.etals into an artificial material, but also trade and inter- 
communication, which argues commerce, and even shipping. 
On any other supposition it would be hard to account for 
the bronze weapons found in Ireland, for instance. But 
your true scientific man is troubled by no small difficulties 
of this sort. Having got astride his theory, he is bound to 
ride it over all obstacles. He is so far gone that he even 
calls the copper knives found in America, and cut from the 
virgin copper of Lake Superior, "bronze," and assigns them 
to the Bronze Age. 

The extravagance of the theories of geologists and biol- 
ogists (if we may call them so) rises from the fact that they 
take no note of any other sources of knowledge save their 
own specialties. They absolutely ignore the best ascertained 
facts of history, and insist on constructing a history of the 
past from the rocks and the fossils, and the deductions they 
draw, with more or less accuracy, from those data. 

This is the way in which they have built up their ages 
of stone, bronze, and iron. They refuse any help from human 
history, and insist that the bronze or iron instrument, and 
the stratum in which they are found, must tell their own story 
without any help. It reminds us of the ancient mathemati- 
cian who would always tell the clock by algebra, or the 
famous physician who cured all diseases by mathematics. 

As an instance of the extraordinary absurdities into which 
this persistent ignoring of the commonest facts of history 
lead men, working on their own narrow lines, the lake dwell- 
ings of Switzerland are a beautiful illustration. In the 



vSoME Prehistoric Villages. 3^9 

marshes of Switzerland are found the remains of villages 
where the houses were built on piles. These piles are found 
charred, the villages mostly burned, and there are found in 
the peat, broken pottery, burned grain, bones of animals, 
and also bronze articles. 

Because bronze has been found, these '' lacustrine " vil- 
lages figure among our prehistoric savans as very venerable 
villages indeed, — some thousands of years before xAdam, any- 
way. The bronze proves that they belong to the Bronze 
Age, and it is a foregone conclusion that the Bronze Age was 
an age away beyond all human knowledge, except as these 
gentlemen can guess about it. To be sure, bronze was used 
in Homer's time, and bronze was used in Ireland down to 
the seventh century of our own era, and the Stone Age 
continued in England till the Norman Conquest, those fool- 
ish people, the historians, telling us that the Saxons were 
armed with stone hammers at the battle of Hastings; and 
in Prussia, as they also tell us, stone hammers were battle- 
w^eapons to the thirteenth century; but all that does not 
trouble your true savant, who will tell you the clock by alge- 
bra, and will cure the toothache by mathematics. 

We pass these all by. The curious thing about it is, that 
these Swiss lake-dwellings, about which the geologists, the 
strata and fossil people, have been so busy, and on which 
they have founded such wonderful theories, are no more pre- 
historic than Washington city, and that these archaeological 
gentlemen have had to do a vast amount of forgetting to get 
themselves so stultified. 

Most of them, as boys, read Caesar's "Commentaries," we 
take it, and if they did, they once knew all about the Swiss 
lake villages, and how they came to be burned, and how the 
burnt corn, and all the rest of the rubbish, came to be among 
the ruins. They may have been too busy over the grammar 
and dictionary drill to pay much heed to the sense of Caesar's 
beautifully told story, but even the dullest boy could scarcely 
pass Orgetorix and his doings without observation. 



320 Copy. 

Now, it is the fact, as the " North British Review '* re- 
minds us, in its review of Sir John Lubbock's " Prehistoric 
Times," that in the first book of that well-thumbed school 
volume, '' The Commentaries of C. Julius Caesar on the 
Gallic War," there is a complete explanation of the facts 
that have puzzled their wise brains in connection with the 
lacustrine villages of Switzerland, their burnt piles and 
burnt corn, their pottery and their bronze. In the second, 
third, fourth, and fifth chapters of the first book we are told 
what we translate in substance as follows : 

" Orgetorix was the richest and most noble among the 
Helvetians. He persuaded the Helvetians that they should 
leave their territory with all their forces. He did this the 
more easily because they were hemmed in on all sides by 
the nature of the territory — on one side by the Rhine, on 
another by Mount Jura, on a third by Lake Leman and the 
River Rhone, which divided them from the Roman Province 
— so pressed in, they could make but short expeditions, and 
it was a grief to them. 

" Liduced by these considerations, and led by the influ- 
ence of Orgetorix, they determined to prepare for a migra- 
tion. Orgetorix vv^as chosen to make a treaty of peace with 
the neighboring tribes (that they might not be attacked in 
the midst of their preparations). On this embassy he per- 
suaded Casticus, a prince of the tribe of the Sequani, and 
Dumnorix, a chief of ^^dui, to enter into a conspiracy Avith 
him, that, using the three powerful tribes he and they repre- 
sented, they might become masters of all Gaul. 

'' The plot was discovered by the Helvetians. Orgetorix 
was summoned to stand his trial for a treasonable conspiracy, 
and, as the report went, he killed himself. At all events he 
died 

*^But the Helvetians did not change their purpose of 
leaving their country and finding new settlements, and when 
they had prepared everything, they burned all their towns 
to the number of twelve, their villages to the number of 



Some Prehistoric Villages. 3^1 

forty, all their private edifices and all their corn, except 
what they could carry with them, that, all hope of re- 
turning being taken away, they might be more ready 
to face dangers. They also persuaded the neighboring 
tribes, the Rauraci, the Tulingi, and the Latobrogi, to ac- 
company them, and they, too, burnt their towns, villages, 
and unnecessary supplies." 

The reader, after considering the above bit of history 
out of a familiar old school-book, will agree with the " North 
British Review : " 

" We do not remember to have seen these important facts 
mentioned in connection with the Swiss lake dwellings, and 
yet they afford a complete explanation of the absence of 
many valuable articles in metal, of the burnt corn, half-burnt 
piles, broken crockery, and, in fact, all the circumstances for 
the explanation of which the most ingenious theories have 
been invented." 

• In other words, the antiquarian wisdom about the Swiss 
villages is another edition of the story of that mysterious 
inscription laid before that learned body, the famous 
"Pickwick Club," and which turned out, after a vast ex- 
penditure of archaeological lore, to be only, — " Bill Stumps, 
His Mark." 



I PAIN— ITS MEANING. 

THE Christian view of life is that it is a discipline. God 
is training men for another life and a higher service. 
He arranges circumstances and controls events, so as to give 
the best opportunity for such training. But with God's 
sovereignty man's free agency must concur. The oppor- 
tunity is given. God does not force its acceptance. While, 
therefore, God's design may be a blessing, man may turn 
the blessing to a curse. 

On the doctrine only of its being a moral discipline can we 
account for the differences in men's earthly fortunes. The 
old Pharisaic and pagan notion that pain and suffering are 
evidences of sin, and punishment of it in the individual was 
long ago condemned by our Lord, as was also its correlative 
notion, that prosperity argues goodness and righteousness in 
him that enjoys it. They are both condemned by our ordi- 
nary human experience. We see the good man go -his weary 
road with bleeding feet and aching heart. The hot sun 
smites him, and he stumbles on a weary road, with no light 
but the light seen by faith. We see the bad man — often 
the utterly vile, godless, hypocritical, selfish, bold, bad man 
— enjoying all the outward bliss of life, of family and friends, 
of honor and wealth and social station ; living in prosperity 
and peace. The villain lives, and is honored ; and dies, and 
is honored in his grave; and the honest, faithful soul he 
ruined, with earthly ruin at least, walks to the grave dis- 
honored, and lies down dishonored, thanking God for a 
merciful escape from a world that to him was only evil. 
We cannot understand it at all, unless for the vision of a 



Pain — Its Meaning. 323 

day when all the wrongs of time will be righted ; unless on 
the faith that this world is a probation, and this life only a 
discipline and a training for another. 

Pain, in this world at least, then, is not evil, nor always 
the punishment for evil done. Sin, indeed, brought pain 
into the world, but not always does the pain come to him 
who does the sin. By the blessed alchemy of Heaven, God 
has transmuted the result of sin into a blessing. Pain, in 
this world, instead of being evil, is often good ; for while 
some are best disciplined by prosperity — while the sunshine 
and the summer rains will best bring to growth whatever of 
good seed is in their hearts — there are others, and they are 
the majority, who must endure the ploughings of sorrow, 
the harro wings of agony, and into whose hearts must fall the 
blinding storms of tears and bitterness. " All thy waves and 
storms have gone over me," cried David, out of the depths, 
and turned to God while he cried. There are times when a 
man can sit in the dust and thank God that he is smitten ; 
times when he feels that every blow is a blow of love ; when 
he can offer thanks for pain, and praise God for suffering, 
because these are the evidences that God is not forgetting 
him. 

In a good deal of the popular religionism of the time we 
see a dangerous shallowness on the subject. It has no place 
for pain. It represents religion rather as an insurance against 
pain present or to come. It knows nothing of self-discipline, 
and talks shallowly, as if happiness were the aim and end 
of all things, and Christianity were sent to insure it, now and 
always. 

Nay, the making of men is the aim and end of all things 
here, the training to strength and perfection of human souls 
and spirits and bodies for the grand life and work to come. 
Small matter whether they be happy, as we call it, or 
unhappy, for the few years they are here. Great matter 
that they are disciplined into a robust power for what is 
coming in the other worlds of God. And therefore God 



3^4 Copy. 

ploughs de^^p, and harrows strong. Therefore He sends the 
lashing storms, and the wmds that twist and bend the tree. 
Therefore He takes pain, which sin brought and brings, and 
in the crucible of love transmutes it into a blessing, and 
sends it as the best gift to a soul that will grow to perfect 
stature. 

A man accepts it at God's holy liands. He drinks the 
dregs of life, — the bitterest draught is often the best tonic. . 
He grows strong by bearing. He becomes patient, calm, 
masterful of the world and life, fearless of events, trustful in 
the darkness, courageous in the gloom, and very tender and 
very pitiful to others. There never was a strong soul yet 
nursed on delicacies and swathed in silk. The great leaders 
of the world, the star-crowned kings and deliverers of men, 
the strong heroic souls who loom through the haze of time in 
outlines half-divine were men, all, who walked hand in hand 
with pain, who drank the wormwood and the rue of life 
in daily draughts. All real crowns have been crowns of 
thorns. 

Christianity came as the consecration of pain. The Lord 
ottered it in measure infinite on the altar of Calvary. Strange 
that we should any of us forget that. Strange we should 
miss its meaning, when all our hopes hang on a pain that was 
infinite, and a sorrow that God alone can measure. If a 
man will take it as God sends it, he will find, as millions 
have done, that it is a pure blessing. There is nothing so 
much to be feared in this w^orld as unalloyed happiness. 
Long-continued prosperity is a trial few souls can endure. 
But when earthly ties are breaking, w^hen earthly trusts are 
rotten reeds, when faith is gone in things here, and a house 
a man had builded on the earth for his home is reeling into 
ruin round him, then is the time he lies closest to God's feet, 
when, through the darkness and the terror, he can clasp 
the strong Hand that alone sustains the world, and stand 
amid the wrecks of life, unshaken, by virtue of that awful, 
clasp and grasp of the one Hand that changes not. 



Pain — Its Meaning. 3^5 

Such hours come, and let no soul cry or moan or weakly 
despair. They are the birth-hours of life. They are times 
when the soul grows to manhood in a night ; times w^hen it 
rises in God's power, and defies hell and time, and chance 
and change, in the vision of its own immortality and the 
might of its undying trust. And they are so, even when the 
pain is one that comes from no common loss of life, from 
no mere bereavement of death, or visitation of Avhat we call 
misfortune. They are so, even in higher measure, when the 
pain is, as it ofcen may be, the Christlike pain that is 
endured for others, that comes to the innocent by others' 
guilt, and falls on the guiltless by others' sins. 

Yet this, the sorest form in v/hich pain comes to men, 
Christianity finds a place for, and transmutes into a blessing. 
It was the very pain of our dear Lord, this. A man stands 
by Him when such pain comes ; he goes down with Him 
to Gethsemane, and wrestles alone in the garden with 
Christ. He follows Him to Pilate's hall, and endures beside 
Him the mockery and the buffeting and the scourging. He 
carries His cross, following humbly up the stony ascent to 
Calvary. Never is suffering so Christlike, and pain so divine, 
as when it is borne by a man for the unfaithfulness, the 
ingratitute, the sins of others. Never can he approach Christ 
so confidently, and be so sure he shares His Spirit, as in the 
patient, manful bearing of such pain. 

But one must know whence it comes, and who sends it. 
One must take the discipline rightly, and bow his head, not 
in sorrow only, but in manful patience; for come what will, 
the high God rules, and here, in the apprenticchood of time, 
is training souls, by stern but loving discipline, for the work 
of masters soraevvdiere in His white worlds far away ; and 
the strong masters, in those other fields of heaven's high joy 
and duty, are those who here bent patiently to the burden, 
and faced manfully the bitterness, and walked with the Great 
Master in His pains. 



THE INDIAN QUESTION. 

^r^HE "Piegan Massacre" shocked the nation from end 
X to end. The thing is a horror, at whose report the 
world's ears tingle. A United States force is sent out, and, 
according to its general's report, " strikes a good hard blow '* 
on an Indian village ; the '' hard blow " consisting in mur- 
dering one hundred and seventy-three persons, of whom 
thirty-three were men, and the rest women and children, — 
fifty children under twelve, and some in their mothers' 
arms ! 

People are asking if this is the sort of business for which 
United States officers and soldiers are kept, and the thing 
which a Christian, or at least a civilized nation, considers 
warfare in the nineteenth century ? And yet this horror, 
which has disgraced the nation and the army before the civ- 
ilized world, is only the culmination of the imbecility and 
idiocy which has so far guided us in dealing with the Indians. 
It has come to this at last, that we have learned from the 
savages, and have concluded to carry on war as they do. 

We call it imbecility. Horrible as the thing is, its cruelty 
strikes one less than its idiocy. Positively we do not know 
any better. We have had two centuries of experience, and 
we have not learned to deal any better Vvdth the native tribes 
of this continent than to excel them in savagery. 

In the ancient days of Europe, when our Teutonic fore- 
fathers came down red-handed on the Roman Empire and 
took possession of its territories and cities, in their. ignorance 
and barbarism they adopted the principle that law goes by 
race, and not by territory. They made law a personal affair. 



The Indian Question. ^^2"] 

The Roman provincial in Gaul or Spain was to be governed 
by Roman law, to be tried and punished by that. The con- 
quering Frank or Visigoth or Ostrogoth was to be governed, 
tried, and punished by Frankish or Gothic law. There were 
a half dozen laws sometimes in one territory. This was the 
first barbarous arrangement. 

Under such an arrangement it is pretty clear now there 
could be no settled government, no fixed and stable order. 
It must have been social chaos, a reign of disorder, robbery, 
and blood. The very first necessity in building up a civil- 
iz:ition was to make one law supreme, as wide as the land, 
and embracing all men in the land equally. Till Europe 
settled into such a law there w^as no progress possible. And, 
therefore, the first dawning of order and civilization shows 
us the efibrt to abolish the idea that law goes with the man, 
and establish the principle that it goes with the land. 

Nevertheless, the United States, since the nation existed, 
has persistently revived and acted on this old absurdity of 
European barbarism. We have acted on the theory that law 
is not for the land, but for the person. We have had white- 
man's law for ourselves, and red-man's law for the Indian. 
We have allowed every little squad of Indians the rights of 
a nationality. We have recognized, in our own territory, 
the absurdity of a half dozen different codes. We have 
deliberately gone back twelve hundred years, to the twilight 
of civilization, for our method of governing one half of our 
national domain. 

What do we mean.^ We mean that Wyoming, Utah, 
Montana, and the rest, are either American territory or they 
are not. If they are, the law of the land is supreme there 
over every man, black, red, white, or parti-colored, — call 
himself settler or Indian, miner or digger, it matters not. 
We should have long since ceased to recognize any such 
thing as Indian tribes or nations ; we should have 
ignored Indian laws ; we should have insisted on ending 
Indian ^^ palavers," "peace-pipes," and all such nonsense, for 



328 Copy. 

good and all ; we should have dealt with Indians as individ- 
uals, exactly as we deal with other people; we should have 
recognized one law for all, and insisted that all men should 
obey that law, giving Indians just the same rights — no less 
and no more — that we give to all other human creatures in 
the country. 

So England has treated her Indians in Canada ; so Russia 
has treated hers in Alaska, as she treated her savages in 
Europe and Asia. Instead of that, we have recognized every 
half-starved swarm of Indians as a nation, with national 
rights of peace and war. We have made solemn palavers 
with them, wonderful treaties with them, have sent ambas- 
sadors to them, and have given them a premium to remain 
savages still As long as they remained Indians, any fifty or 
a hundred of them were a nation to be treated with, half- 
starved and naked though they might be. If only they 
would settle down, and take to farming and decency, and 
good food and washing, their importance would vanish on 
the instant. 

Our system has kept them savages and enemies as effec- 
tually as if it had been framed for the purpose. The Piegan 
massacre is but a natural outcome of the system. We do 
not know any better than to cut the throats of babies at the 
breast Our wiseacres at Washington, after ninety years of 
apprenticeship, have not found out any better use for Gen- 
eral Sheridan and his troops than to employ them at that. 
And the cost ! How much does it take to get an Indian 
mother in Montana murdered ? What is the cost of slaugh- 
tering a two-weeks old infant ? Ten thousand dollars for 
the mother, and five thousand for the child, at the lowest 
figure. 

The thing is so sickening, that one is tempted to put it 
aside as a horrible dream. The thing is so weak and stupid, 
that one wonders whether there is any sense left among what 
we call by a figure of speech statesmen. The whole business 
of Indian bureaus and Indian agencies, the imbecile and 



The Indian Question, 3^9 

corrupt system, should have been abolished long since. In- 
dian rights and Indian treaties, and all such undignified tom- 
foolery, should have been buried. The law of the land 
should have been over the Indian, to coerce him and to pro- 
tect him, as it is over everybody else. It should have been 
made to his advantage, and not to his disadvantage, to civil- 
ize himself. Transgressing the law, robbing or stealing, he 
should have been dealt with as an individual, and a sufficient 
force employed to enforce the law. 

This is the common-sense way, and the civilized way. 
and the way that has succeeded in other countries, and is 
succeding at the present time. British soldiers have never 
been employed in Canada as General Sheridan has em- 
ployed our brave fellows in Montana, because a trifle of 
common-sense and common honesty has guided Canada in 
dealing with Indians as she deals with other people in her 
boundaries. 

If the act which makes the country blush for its good 
name before the world only rouses the people to look at this 
matter, and induces them to demand that the question of 
the lives of several hundred thousand human beings, and 
the safety of our settlers on the frontier, receive as much 
attention at Washington as is given to the placing or displac- 
ing of some paltry office-holder, the poor Piegan mothers 
and their babies will not have been murdered in vain. 



^ FAILURES, AND WHAT THEY PROVE. 

WE have seen it mentioned that a certain clergyman 
has preached a sermon to show that " Protestant- 
ism is a failure " 

We do not know the value or ability of the sermon. It 
is a very easy subject on which to get up a sermon, book, 
pamphlet, or essay, and we have no doubt the sermon was, 
in its way, quite able, — for Protestantism can easily be 
proved a failure. There is no doubt about that, and if a 
man wants to be eloquent and fluent and startling, he can 
show it to be a terrible and disgraceful failure. We must admit 
all this. But just here we must also add that the same man, 
if he wants to be eloquent and fluent and original, can, by 
the very same course of reasoning, prove that Christianity is 
a failure. 

Once, when we were very young indeed, this failure busi- 
ness had a great deal of importance in our eyes. We thought 
it really a very nice thing done to have Romanism proved a 
failure,' or infidelity proved a failure, or monarchy proved a 
failure, or anything else we disliked proved a failure. 

We grew older, and it slowly dawned upon us that not 
only the things we abhorred, but also the things we loved, 
could be proved failures, equally. It came to us, as it 
coines, we think, to most men who keep open eyes 
to life and its experiences, that, on the whole, this world 
is a world of failures ; that the good thing does not always 
prosper nor the wise thing always succeed ; that, on the 
w^hole, a show of hands proves nothing ; nor does any 
amount of triumphant shouts, from any extent of throat and 



Failures, and what they Prove. 33^ 

lungs, declare the truth ; that, somehow, the right is often 
trampled beneath the victorious hoofs of brutal wrong, — 
seems utterly to fail and perish on some lost field. 

Nevertheless, men will always, perhaps, bring up the ar- 
gument supposed to be in failure. They will still cite failure 
as an evidence of untruth, of wrong, or, at least, of mistake. 
What is the value of the argument ? Suppose that we admit 
Protestantism, for instance, a failure, do \yq thereby admit 
Protestantism to be wrong .^ Certainly not, unless we as- 
sume that, in this world, the truth will always succeed, which 
is an assumption that no man of experience in this world 
will admit for a mom.ent. Protestantism may be utterly 
right, and yet utterly a failure nevertheless. Its right or 
wrong must be determined by entirely other arguments. 
We cannot settle its truth or falsehood by a show of hands. 
Now, it is no concern of ours here to prove Protestantism 
either true or false We do not know exactly vvhat the 
preacher mentioned meant by Protestantism. It is a very 
vague term. It includes, in one sense. Mormons, Spiritual- 
ists, infidels of all sorts. What vre a're concerned to say is, 
that the proof that it has failed, take it as we may, is very 
easily collected, and yet that its failure is a matter of no im- 
portance in any argument against it. 

It is easy, for instance, to prove that monarchy is a fail- 
ure, as a system of government. It is based on the theory 
of divine right, — that the king is the father of the people ; 
that the wise and strong should rule, for their good, the weak 
and foolish. It has never come up to its theory. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the king has not usually been as wise or as strong 
as thousands of his subjects. Men -in hundreds, in his do- 
minions, have had more royal and ruling souls than the 
crowned king. The real shepherds of the people have not 
carried the sceptre. The real kings of men have not worn 
the diadem. Monarchy has failed, tested by its own tests. 

But republicanism has failed equally. There is not 
much, one might say, to choose. The theory that all men 



^ ^ ^ Copy. 



o J- 

are equal — the only theory on \vhich republicanism can 
stand — has never been carried out, possibly never will be. 
The wise and the unwise have equal voices too. The cor- 
rupt and the i^ure vote with equal authority. The honest 
citizen deposits a ballot which the bribed traitor, who sells 
his vote, neutralizes the next moment. There is crime in 
the republic, civil war, poverty, suffering, injustice, govern- 
mental corruption, fraud, and oppression. Tested by its own 
tests, measured by its own chosen measures, republicanism 
also is a failure. 

So Protestantism may be proved a failure. It has not 
come up to its own measure. It has promised great things, 
and has not fulfilled them. It was strong once, in its own 
youth, where now it is weak. It came with open Bible, 
claiming to have God's infallible truth, and it began at once 
endless contests about the meaning of that infallible truth. 
It shivered itself into sects. It lost to all profession of the 
Christian name thousands of its children. It has become 
weak and divided. Its manifestations of Christian life and 
duty are low and mean. 

It is easy to keep up such charges against Protestantism. 
Tested by its owm tests, it is easy to condemn it. Measured 
by its own claims, it fails disgracefully. Its promises have 
so far failed of fulfilment. Its hopes have died out in dis- 
appointment. Its triumphant youth has been followed by a 
weak and fruitless age. It is very easy for a fluent preacher 
to condemn it from the barrier of his pulpit as a failure. 

But is it not just as easy for another fluent preacher, 
from the barrier of another pulpit, to prove Romanism a 
failure ? For has not Romanism begotten Protestantism ? 
Is it not, therefore, at last, responsible for all the failures of 
the thing itself created ? All Protestants are the children of 
those who once were subjects of the Papacy. Their fathers 
were driven out because the Papacy had become, on the 
testimony of its own popes and princes, too utterly corrupt 
and shameless for decent men to endure. It w^as a gross 



Failures, and what thev Prove. 333 

and disgracefuV failure, and men turned protestants against 
it because it was so confessed. Protestantism and all its 
failures are, therefore, historically, parts of the still greater 
failure of Romanism. But even passing this plain fact, 
which, in the argument, is always as strangely forgotten, Ro- 
manism once had Europe in its hands. What did it do for 
it } It created Protestantism. Perhaps the only good it did 
do. It was such a failure in England, that England turned 
it out. It was such a failure in Germany, that a great part 
of Germany did the same. It was driven out of Sweden 
and Denm.ark and Norway, not certainly as a successful 
thing. 

In the countries that have retained it, it has surely not 
been any remarkable blessing. Its results in Spain are 
hardly in the nature of a triumphant success, and even Italy 
presents no evidence that Romanism in its best estate and 
in its purest shape is so much better than Protestantism, as 
seen in Prussia, England, or the United States. 

It is easy to measure Romanism with its own measure, 
and prove it a disgraceful failure. It has claimed and exer- 
cised the most scrutinizing tyranny over the souls of men. 
It has demanded the secret thoughts as well as the words 
and deeds for the control and direction of its priesthood. 
It has professed to be the Holy Church, the Miraculous 
Church, the Church of Infallibility, and the seat of its supreme 
power and holiness, Rome, is the most immoral and criminal 
city of its size in Christendom. So, by our argument, Ro- 
manism is a failure. But we may go on. It is just as easy, 
by the same style of argum.entation, to prove Christianity a 
failure. Christianity is responsible for Romanism, as Ro- 
manism is for Protestantism , and all the failures of both 
are failures of Christianity. The infidel has his barrier to 
speak fluent argument from, and he turns on our Romish 
failure and Protestant failure alike, and undertakes to show 
that Christianity itself is the greatest failure of all. For 
look at all Asia Minor. It was once Christian. Bishops, 



334 Copy. 

priests, people, and churches filled the whole land. There 
were the first seats of the Gospel, the very Churches the 
Apostles planted. All are swept away. Christianity has not 
fulfilled the promise of its youth. It has failed utterly over 
all that ancient land. It is even a question whether there 
are any more Christians to-day than there were fourteen 
hundred years ago. Apparent gains, westward, have 
scarcely more than compensated for losses eastward. And 
then see how the promise of Christianity has been unfulfilled. 
It has lost all aggressive power. It has converted no new 
nation for six centuries. It stands helpless before an over- 
whelming paganism. 

Worse still. Those who profess it, measured by its 
laws, are a disgrace to it. So-called Christians break every 
law of Christianity. It has no power over the lives of mil- 
lions in nominally Christian lands. There are foul crimes 
innumerable in Christian countries as in heathen. There 
are poverty, misery, oppression, wretchedness, in Christian 
cities, to tauch the hardest heart. There are nests of unre- 
lieved and utter misery under the shadow of church spires, 
and palaces dedicated to vice and sin in cities where honest 
poverty or misfortune can find no shelter. 

So we prove Christianity a failure. The eloquent op- 
poser could go on indefinitely, on this course, and prove, 
quite to his own satisfaction, that there is no greater failure 
than Christianity itself. And w^hat shall we say it all 
amounts to ? That Christianity is false ? That Protestant- 
ism is false ? That republicanism is not as good as mon- 
archy ? That, in short, there is no thing on earth true, and 
no thing good, because there is no thing which has not 
failed and does not fail, and will not more or less fail, while 
this world stands ? We certainly shall not say it amounts to 
this at all. When some fluent gentleman proves that repub- 
licanism is a failure, w^e shall not thereupon conclude, as in- 
experienced and exceedingly young men are apt to do, that 
monarchy is therefore divine, for we know that monarchy is 



Failures, and what thev Prove. 335 

a failure also. Nor when he proves that Protestantism is a 
faihire shall we accept, as he would seem to think we should, 
P,.omanism as the truth of God, inasmuch as we know that 
Romanism is a still grosser failure. Nor when he proves, 
as he easily may, that Christianity is what he calls a failure, 
shall we, thereupon, feel compelled to turn pagan or infidel 
without further hesitation, because we know that paganism 
and infidelity are gigantic failures these several thousand 
years. But we shall say that it all amounts to this, and no 
more. There is nothing which quite comes up to even its 
own standard. And the loftier the standard, the more strik- 
ing and marked the failure to reach it, — the greater the dif- 
ference between promise and performance. 

All systems fail to reach their promise, as all men fail to 
reach their ideal. The very best and holiest faith will not 
find a fitting covering in practice. The elements of human 
weakness, instability, and sin, come in, in all things, and in- 
jure alL 

Since this is so — since human sin and weakness make all 
men and all systems fail — it is easy enough to prove Protes- 
tantism, or anything else, a failure. Every form of govern- 
ment, or every form of faith, tried even by its own standards, 
fails to put into practice its own principles, and condemns 
itself, more or less, by its own measures. 

It does not, therefore, follow that there is no true form 
of faith, and no wise form of government. Neither does it 
follow that one form is just as good as another. 

It does follow (and this is the only logical conclusion) 
that talk about failure or success is shallow talk, and proves 
nothing; that everything can be shown to fail, but also that 
everything can be shown to succeed ; and that, therefore, we 
are remanded back to the examination of the truth of any 
system, not by its success or failure, but by its agreement 
with the Word of God, which, fail what may or succeed 
what may, go up or down what may, " shall stand forever." 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE,— THE ASSUMPTION. 

THE " woman question," as it is called, is one about 
which w^e have very little to say. Whether a few 
million more be added to the number of voters who now vote 
with all the wisdom and considerateness with wdiich a flock 
of sheep jump one after another, following their leader, into 
a ditch, has not seemed to us a question of any very great 
consequence. The advocates of woman suffrage have prom- 
ised great things as the result of their measure, in the way 
of higher principle and purer morals The higher principle 
and the purer morals we should be all glad to see. But the 
hope of their following on women's voting rests on an 
assumption w^hich is by no means proved. 

The "W^oman's Journal" puts it forth in the following 
question : 

Does any one suppose that if the women of New York, 
w^ho constitute one half its people, had their equal voice in 
the government of the city, that every tenth house would 
continue to be a den of drunkenness, or worse debauchery ? " 

The assumption here is that women are better, higher 
in principle, truer to right and good and purity than men. 
It is always taken for granted by the "women's rights" 
people that this is the case It is an axiom on which they 
found a great deal of their talk. Is it frue ? 

There have been times in the history of various peoples 
when they have sunk into the lowest depths of vileness, of 
self-indulgence and sensuality. Such times have been the 
forerunners, in all cases, of a people's ruin, either by visita- 
tion of foreign enemies or by domestic disruption. The 



Woman Suffrage, — the Assumption. ^'^y 

Canaanites sank into such depths, and Joshua came down 
upon them from the desert, Rome descended into the mire 
after the fall of Carthage, and the Barbarians were at han,d 
to swarm in on Rome. In our day France followed, in a 
degree, Roman example, and the Revolution and the Reign 
of Terror were not delayed. And when the life of a nation 
has so become rotten, is the rottenness only in the men } 
Have the men been beasts or demons, and have the women 
of the nation been angels } The fact is the other way, in 
all such cases In any widespread corruption of a nation's 
life the women have been the most corrupt, and naturally 
enough, as the weaker sex and the one least Jed by reason. 
Bad as Roman men were in the days of Rome's decline, 
they were certainly, as any student of history knows, no 
worse than Roman women. Unprincipled as wxre the 
French higher classes before the flood came and swept them 
away, the w^omen were quite as unprincipled as the men. 

The best, when it does deteriorate, becomes the worst, 
and in a general national corruption it is always found that 
women can sink to depths of infamy which are impossible 
to men. Led by the affections (we do not mean the pas- 
sions), and by the emotions, and by the example of those 
with whom they live, and lacking in that reason which, in 
spite of the example of evil times, can build up for itself 
right and duty on the foundation of eternal fact, women 
have gone faster and farther down than men, in such crises, 
and have left names which might be the names of demons 
to blacken the page of history. It was not the men alone 
of ancient Rome that thronged the amphitheatre at the 
gladiatorial shows. The applause that broke out when the 
corpses were dragged out over the bloody sand would have 
been little regarded had it not come also from Roman vir- 
gins and Roman matrons. 

Apart from romantic twaddle, there is nothing in the 
sex itself which makes it the anchor of national morality. 
There is nothing which affords the hope that when the men 
IS 



33^ Copy. 

of a land go wrong, the women of the land will be far 
behind them. There is certainly nothing in our own social 
life to lead us to suppose that the suffrage extended to all 
women would introduce any new element of justice, right- 
eousness, or purity. 

There are good men and bad men. We do not care to 
speculate on the ratio between them. There are good 
women and bad women, and we suspect the ratio, on the 
whole, is about the same as between the others. We have 
no reason to suppose that the result would be essentially 
changed if all the women, as well as the men, voted. If 
our national tone" is lowered, and our national morals are 
deteriorating, the blame is found with the women as well as 
with the men. In the carnival of crime, which is rampant 
over the land, the women are quite as active revellers as 
the men. Indeed, there are some crimes, and they are 
those which eat out a people's manliness the deepest, which 
men cannot perform. These are monopolized by the 
women. Moralists and physicians are calling earnest atten- 
tion to them, warning and pleading against them on grounds 
of moraMty and grounds of physical health ; and whether 
they e ist in the degree in which we are told they do or 
not, chey are crimes peculiar to womanhood, even to 
mationhood. The young gentleman of the period may not 
be a very noble specimen of humanity, but it must be con- 
fessed he will not find his ideal of human nature much 
elevated by a careful study of the girl of the period. In 
the breaking up of homes and the corruption of the sacred- 
ness of the family by unlimited divorce, and the crimes 
which it fosters and suggests, the blame lies, as a rule, with 
the women. Where one husband applies for a divorce, 
statistics Avill show that two or three wives do. Indeed, 
the divorce business, as any one will find who examines 
the records, is patronized by the wives of the" country; 
and the one cause for which alone, as a rule, husbands 
apply for the relief of a divorce, is a most infamous crime 



Woman Suffrage, — the Assumption. 339 

in the wife, which breaks the marriage tie, divorce or no 
divorce. 

The tone of American Hfe is rapidly going down ; per- 
haps in no land, at no period, did corruption work faster. 
The war was a warning and a punishment, but only the 
beginning, a hint at the entrance of the downward road. 
It is natural enough for a certain class of impractical dream- 
ers to imagine that the downward sweep may be arrested 
by some political management, — by an improved ballot-box, 
or a new method of registration, or an extension of the 
suffrage. A great many of us have still the old, stupid 
European notion, that a government makes a country ; that 
the remedy for all evils is a bill in Congress. But even 
these dreamy reformers ought to have their eyes open 
enough to see that there is no ground for their hopes in 
this particular direction. If uprightness, high principle, 
courage, honor, truth, integrity, and earnest purpose are 
wanting in American life, there is small hope, ungallant as 
it may be to say it, that they will be supplied by American 
women. On the whole, the thoughtlessness and frivolity of 
the nation are not found rampant under the breasts of its 
coats. The earnestness of the nation is not found gener- 
ally preserved only by panniers and the Grecian bend. We 
are far gone, indeed, if our only hope for the preserva- 
tion of a high national tone is found in these last " institu- 
tions." 

When the standard of life is high among the men of a 
land, it is high also among the women. When it is lowered 
among the men, the inevitable fact has been that it is lower 
still among the women. Let romantic reformers say what 
they will, when the strong go down, the weak go lower, and 
we must take the sexes as God made them, to supplement 
each other, and not as female lecturers would have had 
them made, if they had been called into council. 



THE GOSPEL VISIBLE. 

THE Church of God has several offices, several classes 
of duties. It is one of the most fruitful causes of 
misunderstanding and mistake, that men are apt to select one 
of these offices or one of these classes of duties, and magnify 
it to the lessening, or perhaps to the denial, of the others. 

The Church has a prophetic office. She is sent to preach 
the Word, to teach the truth, to illuminate and guide man- 
kind. But this is but one of her offices. She has others 
quite as important, as absolutely necessary, indeed, for 
men. 

These other offices, in our time and country, have been 
too much ignored. The prophetic office has been magnified 
to the dwarfing of the others. The duty of preaching the 
-Word has been dwelt upon to the extent almost of forget- 
ting other duties which are quite as important, and just as 
greatly needed. This has given the Church an appearance 
of one-sidedness. She appears, mainly, as a talking organ- 
ization, a corporation whose end is words. The words, 
indeed, are divine. The truths are God's. They are of the 
most aw^ful import. But is the Church only to deal with 
them as w^ords ? Are they not awfully important because 
they are not to be words only, but are to be translated into 
acts } 

If we look to the Apostolic age, we find the Church in 
the amplest exercise of the prophetic office. She magnified 
that office. She made it, of necessity, of first importance. She 
proclaimed the Gospel with all her voices. She went every- 
where preaching ^' that men should repent." But she did 



The Gospel Visible. 34 ^ 

■more than this. She was also in the fullest exercise of her 
other duties. She never forgot these, or shrank from these. 
She did these in the eyes of all the world, and preached the 
Gospel in deed as well as word, in life and visible fact as 
w^ell as in reasoning and exhortation. 

If we look back to that early Church, we find that she 
was not only an organization for the preaching of the Gos- 
pel, for guarding and spreading and teaching the doctrine 
of the Lord, but she was also an organization for carrying 
out into visible result the principles she proclaimed and the 
law of love she preached. She was a doing as well as a talk- 
ing body. She addressed men's eyes as well as their ears. 
She proclaimed a concrete, embodied truth. She, herself, 
was a divine epistle, a holy evangel, " known and read of 
all men." 

We have too much forgotten this phase of her character. 
And yet it stands forth clear and bright on the pages of the 
New Testament, and in the records of primitive days. She 
was the divine organization for taking care of men. She 
was the bride, the Lord's spouse, doing on the earth her 
Lord's work. She was the pitiful, merciful, tender benefac- 
tress of humanity. She w^as the almoner of Christ. Her fair 
hands were ever stretched out in love and pity. Her kind 
arms were open to all the wretched and the needy. For 
her dear Lord's sake she was come to seek out and comfort 
and help those for whom He died. 

There had been nothing like her on the earth before. 
What she undertook was a work which was everywhere left 
undone. She proclaimed the brotherhood and equality of 
men. She declared the awful value of the meanest beggar, 
the untold eternal worth of the most disgusting lazar. The 
souls and the bodies of men she declared to be sacred for 
evermore. She knew no earthly names, no national or race 
distinctions, no social differences in her work. As her Lord 
had died for all, so she was come to care for all. Greek and 
Jew, Barbarian and Scythian, bond and free, she was sent 



342 Copy. 

to them all, because man is more than his circumstances, 
humanity greater than its accidents. 

In the very beginning we find this indelible mark upon 
the Apostolic Church. She is working as well as talking, 
preaching with her hands as well as with her mouth. She 
stands organized to help men in soul and body. The 
" widows " were not to be ^' neglected in the daily minis- 
tration." Every man is cared for ^' according as he had 
need." The poor, the destitute, are, at the very beginning, 
embraced in the systematic charity of the Church. 

If there be want among " the poor saints at Jerusalem," 
provision is made for that want even from Macedonia. Paul 
and Barnabas not only preach, they are the collectors and 
disbursers of an organized charity for the needy brethren. 
The inspired account of a bishop's duty, written to Timothy, 
the first bishop of Ephesus, finds, among directions for gov- 
erning the Church and ordaining clergy, and ordering the 
public services, a large place for directions about the char- 
ities of the Church and the care of its destitute widows. 

When we come to the historic times, when we have full 
accounts of the working of the Church, we see into how large 
a system the first spontaneous charity has developed itself. 
In the third century, under persecution, and beaten upon by 
all the storms of imperial wrath, the Church is nevertheless 
the great benevolent organization of the world. We know 
she preached and taught. Nevertheless, we hear compara- 
tively little of this. The preaching which had the great 
effect, which so rapidly overcame heathenism, which won 
her triumph from fire and rack and block, was the visible 
preaching of her charity, her divine love and pity toward 
mankind. She had her organizations to nurse the sick. 
Pestilence had no terrors for them. They carried their 
lives in their hands. She had her societies to bury the out- 
cast and uncared-for dead. She taught the world the rever- 
ent care we all have now as a common possession for the 
body of the very beggar, because Christ took human flesh. 



The Gospel Visible. 343 

She visited her confessors in their prison-houses, and consol- 
ing hands ministered to their needs. She followed her mar- 
tyrs to the stake, or stood with them on the bloody sand of 
the amphitheatre, and they left to her beneficent care their 
orphans and widows as sacred legacies. She gathered the 
children '^ exposed " by the legalized savagery of Roman law, 
and made them her ovv^n and her Lord's. 

So she stood amid the vileness of heathenism, — talking.^ 
Aye, talking, but doing also, — preaching in every movement, 
proclaiming the Gospel as an embodied living truth, visibly, 
with both her hands. Clear, white, and beautiful, the bride's 
pitying eyes met everywhere the outcast, and everyw^here in 
her arms the wretched were comforted. 

It is astonishing how the feeling that a Church has any- 
thing more to do than talk, to say pious words, has dropped 
out of the thought of men. If they want any good work 
done, they organize a human society. The Church is to 
preach. Other institutions are to practise. Meanwdiile, 
every day the absurdity is becoming more evident, and 
preaching is becoming more empty and fruitless. 

There is a way to preach Christ in this land as He never 
has been preached yet. The land needs Him so preached. 
Thousands are unbelievers because they have never had Him 
preached in this w^ay to them. His Church was sent on 
earth to preach Him in that way, to represent His person 
and His character, and make men love Him because she 
visibly revealed Him. By works of mercy, by charity for the 
needy, by care for the sick, by pity for the outcasts, by 
instruction for the ignorant, by ready love and ready help to 
all w^ho w^ant help or comfort in soul or body, — so must the 
Church preach her Lord once more. The w^orld has become 
deaf to words. Talk has about driven it to indifference. 
But it has eyes. It can see a visible Gospel. It can be over- 
come by a visible Christianity. It has had an invisible 
Church long enough. That Church has almost made it lose 
faith in any reality. It asks now for a visible Church, for a 



344 Copy. 

Church that not only talks about Christ, but preaches and 
reveals Him. The orphan asylum is worth ten thousand 
sermons. The hospital is worth a hundred "pulpit orators" 
of the most sweet voices. The ragged-school, the Magda- 
lene home, the alms-house, — they preach the Gospel as the 
pulpit cannot ; they make Christianity visible and preach- 
ing real. 

Till we rise to a higher appreciation of a Church's duty, 
until we see that she was sent to work as well as talk, until 
we make her what she was at first, — Christ's divine society 
to take care of those He died for, we can look for no 
triumphs like those of old. 



PONTIFEX MAXIMUS. 

HOW far Christianity, in its development, was affected 
by the heathenism which it superseded will be al- 
ways a subject of debate. That it was so affected, after the 
conversion of the empire, and especially after its establishment 
in the place of paganism, in some degree, admits of no doubt. 
When it became the religion of the empire and the emperor, 
conversions to it were rapid and very numerous, and these 
conversions, from political, social, or other worldly motives, 
were not of a.kind to add to its spiritual power. Christianity 
became " the law of the land," and paganism was the object 
of hostile legislation. The result was that the Church was 
filled with merely nominal Christians. They were not such 
as had braved the axe and the fire in the "persecutions." 
It is easy to understand what an effect this must have had 
on the moral life of the Church, and how far it goes in ac- 
counting for the rapid deterioration of Christian character 
in the sixth and seventh centuries. But this might have 
taken place with no deterioration in Christian opinion or 
acknowledged practice. It might have done so, but it is 
hardly possible it could, and, as a matter of fact, it did not. 
These nominal Christians, whose conversion was from one 
form of the state religion to another, brought their old views 
with them, their superstitions, their ignorance, their degraded 
thoughts of God, and they came in such numbers that they 
more or less modified opinion in the Church. 

Moreover, the desire to convert the heathen, and to unify 
as fast as possible the religion of the empire, by making the 
transition from heathenism to Christianitv, existed and 

15* 



346 Copy. 

worked in a degree dangerous to the purity of religion. 
Gregory the Great, in his instructions to Augustine for the 
conduct of his mission among the Angles and Saxons, al- 
lowed the retention of ancient pagan feasts and ceremonies 
Avhen they had been given a Christian meaning. 

It is commonly known that the superstitions which re- 
main in the lower stratum of European populations, even to 
this day, are pagan in their origin, — the horse-shoe over the 
door against witchcraft, the powers attributed to the mistle- 
toe, the notions about the " right foot foremost," which 
imposed even on the sound sense of Dr. Johnson, and. a 
hundred other popular superstitions of the sort, root them- 
selves at last into the old paganism of our forefathers. 

It is startling, as an evidence of the slow departure of pa- 
ganism, even after the empire had been long nominally Chris- 
tian, to read that Constantine, until his death, was the Pontifex 
Maximus of Jupiter Capitolinus, and that six of his succes- 
sors held the same office ; that Constantine, in his visit to 
Rome, exercised the office, by confirming their rights to the 
virgin priestesses of Vesta, and by making several nobles 
priests ; that the haruspices were to be consulted by law in 
public calamities, according to the Theodosian code, and 
that even Pope Innocent was willing to allow the heathen 
rites to be celebrated for deliverance from the northern 
barbarians, if only the rites were performed with decorous 
secrecy. It is not to be wondered at, considering the state 
of society and the times, that a number of customs and even 
beliefs received by the mediaeval Church, and still received 
in the unreformed Church, are relics of paganism. 

The official title of the Bishop of Rome — " Pontifex 
Maximus" — is a simple pagan title. There is no such name 
in the Gospel. There is no such office indicated. It arose 
from no development of Christian doctrine. It was the 
title of the priest of Jupiter, an office borne by Julius 
Caesar, by Augustus, by every emperor, ex officio^ for four 
hundred years. To the early Christain it could only have 



PONTIFEX MaXIMUS. 347 

meant a pagan priest, and suggested only idolatry. It was 
adopted with the cast-off properties of defunct heathenism 
by the Bishop of Rome, when discarded by the right feeling 
of Christian emperors. 

The practice of kissing the toe of the Pontifex Maximus 
was conveyed wifli the name from heathenism also. That 
was a peculiar honor paid to the emperor when he received 
visitors in the capacity of Pontifex, and the Pope, when he 
set up for the office, took also the custom. 

Burning candles in the day-time at altars and shrines as a 
religious observance is one of the most universal customs of 
heathenism now, as it was of Roman and Greek heathenism 
of old. It is a direct transfer of a piece of heathenish 
ritual to the Christian Church. 

Monkery is another transfer. The oldest monks were 
Buddhists, as the oldest hermits about whom we know any- 
thing were Brahmins. The institution was transferred, with 
all that grew out of it and around it, from the preexisting 
heathenism. 

The shaving of the head, which is the mark of the Romish 
priesthood, even in America and England (although they 
manage to conceal the tonsure, which is a small one, from 
observation), is another transfer from the priests of heathen- 
ism, — the worship of the dog-headed Anubis, which worship 
had been long naturalized at Rome. Lampridius tells us 
that Commodus got his head shaved in order to assist in 
carrying that deity in procession. 

A vessel of holy water (not the primitive fountain in the 
court-yard of the church for actual washing of the feet and 
hands before entering) for sprinkling on the worshippers, 
and for the worshippers to apply before entering, w^iich we 
see in Romish chapels and churches now, is the direct suc- 
cessor of the same vessel which stood in the doorway of 
heathen temples in Rome. The water was made, too, as it 
is now, by putting salt into it. Herodotus tells us that 
Croesus sent two holy water-pots, one of silver and one of 



348 ' Copy. 

gold, to stand at the door of the temple of Delphi. It was 
a minor excommunication to forbid a man from sprinkling 
himself with this holy water. The very aspergilluin^ or 
sprinkling-brush, used by the Romish priest now, is an exact 
copy of that used by the pagan priest for the same service. 

In Roman Catholic countries it is a common sight to see 
the priests in their official robes carrying in procession im- 
ages of the Madonna, or the saints — gorgeously dressed dolls 
— from one shrine to another, for the reverence of the people. 
In pagan times, in the same cities, the prototype of the same 
ceremony was an ordinary sight, — the heathen priests car- 
rying images of their gods, gorgeously arrayed, in solemn 
procession, for the adoration of the people. 

In the cities of Italy, at the present time, a familiar sight 
to visitors, and a striking one, is the funeral procession of 
hooded monks and masked brotherhoods, with torches in 
their hands, following the bier. 

Could an ancient pagan inhabitant of the same cities 
be brought to life, the sight would be no strange one to him. 
The flaming torches in procession after the bier would be 
his own method of funeral march. So Virgil describes the 
funeral of Pallas in the eleventh book of "^neid," — "The 
way flames with the long rank of torches," 

Another striking sight to a stranger at many foreign Ro- 
man shrines is the votive offerings hung up in honor of the 
saint. Figures of arms and legs, paintings of diseases of 
which the offerers have been healed, even crutches and gar- 
ments ; and, as at some holy wells in Ireland, even bits of 
rags are suspended by superstitious votaries in acknowledg- 
ment of some cure which the presiding saint is supposed to 
have wrought. The Church of St. Anthony, in Padua (the 
saint who cures erysipelas), is a museum of such offerings. 
The exact counterparts of these offerings have been dug up 
in abundance in the Insula Tiberina, the site of the ancient 
Temple of Esculapius, the god of medicine. This form of 
devotion is a simple relic of paganism, transferred exactly 



PONTIFEX MaXIMUS. 349 

as it stood. The pagan simply ceased hanging up his vo- 
tive -offering in a pagan temple, but continued the practice 
by hanging it up in a Christian church. He ceased honor- 
ing Esculapius in that way, and honored instead St. An- 
thony or some other fancied healer. 

And this suggests still another evident transfer from 
paganism, which goes deeper than outward observance, and 
has corrupted the very source of vv^orsliip, and dethroned 
Christ among the thousands of so-called Christians. 

We need hardly tell our readers that the thousands of 
deities worshipped in Rome and Greece were only small 
gods in the minds of their worshippers. They were local 
or particular deities, — a sort of invisible powers, interme- 
diate betvv^een man and the supreme God. Under each of 
them was some special department of administration : to 
one, one country, to another, another; to one, seed-time, 
to another, harvest ; to one- the garden, to another, the or- 
chard ; to one, the stream, to another, the wood ; to one, 
one part of human life, to another, another part. We 
need hardly remind them either that many of these little 
deities were deified men, demigods, heroes, deified dead 
people, male and female. 

Olympus was peopled with an army of this sort of canonized 
or deified mortals. Toward the last it became the universal 
practice to thus deify the emperors, and to make every dead 
Caesar a god. This practice came down to the very times 
of Constantine, and was a part of the Roman religion when 
Christianity was winning its first conquests. It v/as even 
thought one of the most reasonable forms of piety to canon- 
ize, in this way, benefactors and heroes and rulers, and the 
worship of the dead emperors had almost become the na- 
tional worship of Rome, to the exclusion of Jupiter and his 
family. 

The saint-worship, the canonization of the Church of 
Rome, arc striking continuations of the national pagan cus- 
tom. Each saint' hrj; his department. Each is worshipped 



350 Copy. 

for his special blessing. One looks, as of old, to seed-time 
and another to harvest. One patronizes merchants and 
another shoemakers. One cures fever and another tooth- 
ache. One takes care of horses and another, in Romish 
countries, takes care of asses. And the worship of these 
intermediate deities has, as all travellers testify, almost ex- 
tinguisned, in some places, the worship oi God. And in 
this connection there is another striking transfer. The old 
paganism surnamed its deities by the places where they 
were supposed to have shown special blessings or to possess 
special power. There was a Diana of Ephesus and an 
Apollo of Delphi, a Jupiter of the Capitol and a Jupiter 
Ammon. In this, too, the very pagan phrase has been pre- 
served, and has been transferred to our own country even. 
We have the Madonna of Loretto and the Madonna of Bur- 
lington, Vermont. We have special St. Johns for special 
places, and special shrines for special St. Anthonys. 
Heaven has been peopled with an unnumbered army of 
these lesser deities, in exact imitation of the ancient pagan- 
ism, and they are honored with statues, incense offerings, 
and prayers, as the demigods and heroes of old. The 
names are changed, and that is about all ; as they called it 
apotheosis in the old time, and canonization now. 

We have indicated here a few only of the instances in 
which the transfer of pagan rites and opinions is marked. 
More will occur to any one in thinking on the subject. And 
it will be clear, we should think, from whence came the cor- 
ruption, which, after the sixth century and through the 
middle ages, so banefully affected Christianity. 

While our holy religion was struggling with the world, 
while it stood the confessed foe of the world, as the world 
was of it, it remained as it came from the hands of the 
Lord and His Apostles. When it was placed in the shoes 
of paganism, and became the religion of a pagan empire, 
when paganism was disestablished and disendowed (our 
English friends will understand that), and Christianity was 



PONTIFEX MaXIMUS. 35^ 

established and endowed in its stead, it succeeded to an evil 
and corrupting inheritance, and its sudden deterioration is 
plainly accounted for. 

The Reformation was an attempt, more or less consist- 
ent, in its various centres of movement, to restore Christian- 
ity to its primitive estate. It was not merely false out- 
growths of true Christian doctrine which it attempted to 
remove. It was actually seeking to destroy a paganism 
w^hich had crept in in ignorant times, and claimed to be 
Christianity. 

No one appreciates the Reformation who does not un- 
derstand the real sources of the corruptions against which 
it protested. A lame or distorted Christianity is one 
thing ; a paganism masquerading under Christian names and 
titles is another thing. And the very name by which the 
head of mediaeval Christianity claimed the allegiance of men, 
the very name under which he claims it now — Pontifex Max- 
imus — in every official utterance, in every bombastic invita- 
tion to return to his obedience, is a purely pagan name, a 
name unknown to the Word of God, foreign, utterly, to 
Christianity, and inherited, with much besides, from his 
predecessors, dow^n to the fourth century, the Pontifices 
Maximi of the Capitoline Jove. 

The additions of Romanism to the Catholic Christian 
faith against which we protest are all typified by the heathen 
title of its head, — they are all like it, when one examines 
them, bits of paganism dressed up in Christian clothes. 



THE WATCHWORD OF CIVILIZATION. 

WE met the other day, in a paper not counted infidel, 
the quotation, " Take no thought for the morrow : 
for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself," 
followed by some such flippant remark as that " it is well 
farmers, merchants, sailors, and practical people generally, 
do not follow this advice, otherwise we should be as badly 
off as the savages." 

The flippant and blasphemous sneer was quoted after- 
ward into one of our religious exchanges, and some small 
criticism was made upon the misapprehension of the mean- 
ing of the phrase "take no thought." It was said to mean 
*' take no anxious thought," we believe, or something of 
that sort. 

We do not think the Lord's words need any such weak 
defence. The sneer arises as much from ignorance of the 
world as from ignorance of His saying. That speech goes 
down into the deeps of life and human nature, and reveals 
the ground on which civilization stands. To the shallow 
ear it conveys what was in the shallow mind that penned 
the sneer above. To the thoughtful mind it is the word of 
Him who knows all that is in man. For it is just because 
the savage takes thought for the morrow that he remains a 
savage, and just because the civilized man takes no thought 
for the morrow that he has become and remains civilized. 

The savage believes only in to-day. The future to him 
has no fixity. The world is not governed by a God of 
Law, but by evil and capricious powers. His life is one of 
uncertain tv and violence. What he has novr i:3 his ovvu. He 



The Watchword of Civilization. 353 

can enjoy it now. He is not sure he can enjoy it to-morrow. 
He greedily grasps and devours the good of the moment, 
because he takes thought for the next as a thing altogether 
in the power of evil chances. And so taking thought for 
the morrow as for something that he has no certainty about, 
as for a thing that may be or may not be, as the evil powers 
will, he neither builds nor plants. He makes no ventures 
for the future, because he is so anxious for the future. His 
thought about it scares him so that he does nothing for it. 
He remains a savage, living from hand to mouth. 

The civilized man, on the other hand, believes that which 
has been will be. He has seen into the ordering of nature 
and the divine harmony of life so far, that he has faith in 
that order and harmony for the morrow as he has for to-day. 
He is calmly confident in the overruling powers. Suns will 
rise and set, rains will fall, and dews and seed-time will 
come, and harvest. His home will be his own, guarded by 
the sanctions of law. His goods will be his ovrn to enjoy, 
shielded by the sword of justice. His morrow, if he lives, 
will be in all these respects as secure as his to-day. There- 
fore, he takes no thought for it. He rests, and is confident 
in the security of a divinely-guarded world. He believes 
that justice and righteousness and God are supreme. So he 
lays up for to-morrow. He plants orchards, of vrhich his 
great-grandchildren may eat. He builds houses that may 
shelter his descendants when he has been dead for centu- 
ries He works not for himself, but for the race ; not for 
to-day, but for all time. He constructs not the wigwam to 
shelter himself for a night, but the marble wall that shall 
defy the to-morrows of centuries. He does it all, trusting 
and believing, taking no more thought for to-morrow than 
he takes for to-day. 

Therefore he works to-day confidently, and gives hii 
work permanence. He plows and plants to-day, because 
he believes in a future harvest. Did he take thought 
for the drought and the blight and the storm of to- 



354 Copy. 

morrow, he would gather no harvest in the autumn. 
He sends his ships away around the world, meeting the 
dangers of the tides, the winds, the waves, and the fires, 
because he takes no thought for to-morrow, but trusts 
that to-morrow's duty and care will be repaid as to-day's 
are. He builds his lighthouses on the coast, because that 
to-morrow^ as to-day, the white-winged v/aiidcrers of the sea 
will come sailing to his haven. He founds his time-defying 
institutions of government, learning, and religion, because he 
calmly believes in a million morrows, for which he cannot, 
and only the good God can and will take thought. 

Nay, it is the calm confidence in the future, the taking 
no thought for the morrow, the leaving to-morrow's things 
to itself, its work, its questions, its dangers, its battles, its 
sad defeats, perhaps, in sure confidence in the great Hands 
that guide the ages ; it is the faithful, hopeful doing of to- 
day's work, the fighting out to the bitter end to-day's battles, 
that lies at the root of civilization, and makes its difference 
from savagery. 

Faith is the foundation of power. The world might teach 
a thinking man that, if he found it no where else. The man 
who believes that the high God rules the ages, and under 
that great faith does the little or great to-day's duty, cer- 
tainly trusting that God will care for him and it on the 
morrow, is the man who does work to stand. The nation 
that so does its duty, with something of the same faith, even 
though it be unconscious, is the nation that lays founda- 
tions for a thousand years of to-morrow. 

Our Lord v/as announcing the watchword, not only of 
Christian conquest, but of the conquests of civilization, when 
Hesdi: 

''' Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow : for the 
morrov/ shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient 
unto the day is the evil thereof." 



PERSONAL IDENTITY AFTER DEATH. 

IF men are punished or rewarded in another Ufe, they 
must be the men who in this life have deserved pun- 
ishment or reward. Their identity must be unquestionable. 
It must also, if that punishment or reward is to mean any- 
thing as an example of God's judgment in righteousness, be 
an identity which is known publicly. The man who sinned 
must be, unquestionably, the man vrho is condemned. The 
man w^ho did righteousness and loved mercy and walked 
humbly with his God must be, Vv'ithout question, to any 
on-looker, the same man who is justified at the judg- 
ment. 

"The recognition of friends in another world," a subject 
which has been a good deal discussed, and about which, we 
believe, books have been written, seems a very superfluous 
question, — a question only possible to a mind that has failed 
to comprehend the sharp realities of the other life. In the 
examples given us in Scripture of those who have returned 
from the unseen realms, there is no question about the iden- 
tity. Saul knew Samuel as if he were in the flesh ; Moses 
and Elias, on the mount of transfiguration, were recognized 
as readily as the incarnate Christ. 

The stamp of individuality, that identity and oneness 
of being which God has impressed on every man as if he 
were the single soul created in all the universe, is never 
taken away. Neither sickness nor sorrow nor misfortune, 
neither insanity nor idiocy nor death can change it. The 
child receives it at its birth, and the world-weary man of 
fourscore dies, after all life's chances and changes, and 



356 Copy. 

passes into the world of spints, and is there the same,' — the 
child that lay in its cradle a century ago. 

Identity is one of the mysteries of being. But it is a 
mystery never lost when once conferred. And John Doe in 
heaven will be the identical John Doe his friends knew on 
earth, and Richard Roe in hell will be the same Richard 
that we used to see fitting himself for that position sa perti- 
naciously here on earth. John's old friends will all gladly 
recognize him, and Richard's old companions will all greet 
him. 



HUMAN NATURE. 

DOES human nature lose anything in dying? Pity, 
tenderness, sympathy for the unfortunate and the 
fallen, belong to the best and, as we say in this world, the most 
Christian side of our nature. They are things that make us 
most like God. Would a man be a real man without these ? 
If, in Paradise, he grows more perfect, must he not become 
more pitiful, more tender, more sympathetic ? Is not God 
a,lways so ? And if the redeemed go on through eternity, 
growing more and more into the likeness of God, must they 
not share this part of the likeness and grow in it also? 
Supposing these qualities of our nature destroyed, would the 
redeemed be lovable by men or angels or God ? But if 
these qualities remain, on whom shall they be exercised ? 
They cannot be dead possibilities merely. The*y must be 
active and living powers, or nothing. There must be some 
to pity, or there can be no pity ; some toward whom to be 
tender and helpful, or there can be no tenderness and no 
helpfulness ; some to be merciful and forgiving toward, 
or there can be no mercy and no forgiveness. Who are 
they? 

We remember, somewhere, reading a description of the 
joys of heaven, in which the author made a large portion of 
that joy consist in the comfortable contemplation by the 
saved of the tortures of the damned. One could only ask 
that, if the saved really find joy in such a sight, he may not 
be numbered among them, for, according to this notion, the 
sheep and goats have changed places, and the fiends have 
captured heaven. 



BITS OF THOUGHT. 

A GREAT deal of the wisdom of a man in this century- 
is shown in leaving things unknown, — a great deal of 
his practical good sense in leaving things undone. 

It is no longer possible to know everything. A universal 
scholar will be no more seen among men. The range of 
human knowledge has increased so vastly, has swept out 
and away so far and so fast, that no brain, be its quantity or 
quality what it may, can, in the years commonly given to 
man, even survey the field. A man, therefore, must make 
up his mind, if he propose to learn anything, to be content 
with profound ignorance of a great many other things. It 
is a bitter thing, perhaps, but it is the fact that a man who 
would know anything in this century must purchase his 
knowledge with voluntary and chosen ignorance of a hun- 
dred other things. One must choose his specialty, and devo- 
tion and diligence in that is the price he pays for success. 

It is with doing as it is with knowing. There is only a 
certain amount of work in any case. He cannot do every- 
thing. Nevertheless everything needs doing. All about 
him is undone work clamoring for hands. There are two 
courses before one. To undertake everything, to fret and 
grieve because one finds this and that undone, and to make 
spasmodic efforts to do it, — this is the way of failure. 

Resolutely to make up one's mind to let, as far as he is 
concerned, the most that should be done stay undone still, 
to steel one's heart against demands and necessities, to 
resist all inducements to put forth a single effort, to close 
one's eyes to it all, and to stick heart, hand, life, and love to 



Bits of Thought. 359 

the thing a man undertakes and calls his own, — that is the 
way of success. 

Life is very short, and the single brain and hand, at best, 
very weak, and there are thousands of things to know and to 
do. One must choose, and be content with his choice. And 
so it comes to pass that now, at last, the measure of a man^s 
learning will be the amount of his voluntary ignorance, the 
measure of his practical effectiveness the amount of what 
he is content to leave unattempted. 

We have said it is bitter. But we must accept a changed 
world cheerfully. There is no use in fretting. Many a 
man wears his heart out with regrets over things he wants to 
do and cannot, here and there one, over things he wants to 
know and cannot. 

Neither God nor man demands impossibilities. The 
part of all the world's knowing or doing that comes to one's 
self is one's own responsibility, and w^llbe borne effectively 
and happily as one resolutely shuts his eyes to the enormous 
mass of things he cannot know and cannot do. -Let others 
look to those. 



There is nothing better for a human being, sometimes, 
than a little hearty praise. Many good people consci- 
entiously act on the directly opposite, and seem to think 
nothing better than a little hearty blame. They are mis- 
taken, be conscientious in their blame as they may. There 
are sore burdens enough in life, bitterness and pain enough, 
hard work enough, and little enough for it, enough to de- 
press a man and keep him humble, a keen enough sense of 
failure, succeed as he may, and a word of hearty commen- 
dation, now and then, will lighten his load and brighten his 
heart, and send him on with new hope and energy, and if he 
have any reasonable amount of brains at all, will do him no 
harm. 



o 



60 Copy. . 



Children are sometimes heart-starved for a little hearty 
praise. Conscientious teachers and parents refuse it on 
principle. They are conscientious fools for their pains. 
Boys will act up to the estimate put upon them, or at least 
try to, if they are worth their salt. A hearty word of com- 
mendation is meat and drink to them for the next endeavor. 

It is so with men. The strongest of us cannot work, 
without some recognition of our work. We want to know 
that it is considered good. Our own judgments are not 
sufficient for us. A "well done," now and then, makes hs 
certain of better doing still, in the future. 

We are not speaking of the silly nonsense of flattery. 
We mean sensible, honest, hearty commendation, because a 
man deserves it. We mean the showing that a man's good 
^york is appreciated, that the doer is regarded for the 
doing, and that other people are happy in his doing, and 
want to cheer him on to do more. It will not hurt anybody, 
boy or man. To hold it back often does great harm, and 
inflicts on many a sensitive soul sore pain. For our own 
part, we consider it only an honest man's duty, when he sees 
another man doing good work, faithful and hearty service, 
and doing it well, to say so, and, if it will help him at all in 
his work, to say it to him freely and heartily. 

Sincere commendation is the wine of life. He who 
withholds it, when he can give it, is a churl. He may be 
a pious churl,* a conscientious churl, a churl from the best 
of motives, but he is a churl nevertheless. 



m 



